


The Tales We Tell Ourselves

by jinlinli



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassin's Creed Fusion, Assassin!Steve, Assassins vs. Templars, Captain America: The First Avenger, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mildly Antagonistic Banter, No knowledge of Assassins Creed required, Sniper!Bucky, World War II, templar!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlinli/pseuds/jinlinli
Summary: Steve stares at him for a little while before rubbing a hand over his face. “Sometimes, I feel like you’re being difficult on principle.”“Of course, I am!” Bucky snaps, throwing his hands up. “Why am I the only one who seems to remember we’re in factions that’re all about killing each other!”“So you’re upset because I trust you when I shouldn’t, and we should be trying to kill each other but we aren’t?”“Yes!”Steve groans. “This is ridiculous.”“It’s ridiculous because you have no sense at all.”“I don’t think I’m the only one,” Steve mutters.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeanWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeanWrites/gifts).



> This was a very interesting and rewarding project! I have a lot more thoughts and feelings about Assassins Creed, and I'm so glad to have the opportunity to explore this universe with a little bit of Stucky lovin' on the side (because who doesn't love Stucky?) The Assassins Creed games are so ridiculous, and I love them to death <3
> 
> I'm very grateful to the Big Bang claims deities for giving me such a wonderful collaborator, [Dean](https://deandraws.tumblr.com/). Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and your patience! Your art was such an inspiration, and I hope this fic does it justice!
> 
> I would also like to thank [Rachel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/pseuds/DrowningByDegrees) for your absolutely clutch betaing, as well as your brainstorming energy. This fic would've been stuck without you!

If one ignored the battle-worn scuffs and dents on his weaponry, his non standard-issue rifle, the wear and tear of his uniform—it’s almost believable that Bucky belongs with the rest of the patrol of recruits. The CO might’ve noticed there was something off if Bucky hadn’t been spending the entire time carefully ducking out of his line of sight. But the other privates in the unit sure as hell don’t notice that Bucky’s not one of theirs.

It’s why he chose to tag along with them in the first place.

The whole group is young. Too young. He’d eat his knife if all of them are actually older than eighteen. Hell, there’s a few who look like they’ve barely cracked sixteen. Baby fat in their cheeks, gawky limbs, and an uncertain jitteriness that’s both annoying and endearing. This is their first soirée as a unit probably. A nice easy milk-run of a patrol to get them oriented after shipping out from basic. They know how to vaguely point a gun in the right direction and pull the trigger, but that doesn’t mean they’re particularly observant. Which suits Bucky just fine. 

It’s only been a week since he himself arrived to this particular base, a few miles away from the Allied front in Italy. He’d spent most of that time integrating himself amongst the rest of the soldiers stationed there, convincing everyone that he belonged to every unit and none of them. Someone who’s friendly, likable, and completely forgettable. It was only a few days ago that Bucky received his orders.

An Assassin is to come the following fortnight disguised as a performer to raise troop morale. Bucky can’t help but admire the simple effectiveness of the disguise. Mobility is hard in a war where you’re on no one’s side but your own. God knows, his fellow Templars have spent a lot of time devising solutions to the same problem. Slipping in amongst the endless parade of musicians and entertainers visiting bases all over Europe—it’s so clever, it almost makes him angry that he never thought of it. It would allow him to move freely to wherever he needs to go, and no one thinks anything of it. 

This particular target has been one of the most valuable assets to the Assassins, so his elimination is of the utmost importance. The intelligence report had indicated that the Assassins were prepping for some sort of larger mission, and would be running reconnaissance for several days. His window of opportunity would be when they’re still moving in and out of the base. It gives Bucky the time to ready himself, and he’s sure as hell going to need it for a confrontation like this. Bucky is to proceed cautiously and take the time he has left to make the necessary preparations.

Thus, here he is, listening to new recruits mutter nervously to each other, as he scans the surrounding area and gets a feel for the land. A single soldier wandering around the forests near a front-line base is a lot more suspicious than one out-of-place soldier in an official patrol. He’ll likely have to come back out here later to more thoroughly scout out possible hideouts to tuck himself into, but this serves his purposes just fine for the early stages of reconnaissance. 

However, maybe it really would’ve been less risky to go off on his own. Because one of the recruits is watching him and has been almost since the beginning. At first, Bucky had just chalked it up to a petty show of dominance. Kids come in cocky sometimes, thinking that this whole ugly war is nothing more than a game. This particular recruit is tall and broad and handsome—all things that breed arrogance in a man. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, and too attractive by half. He looks like the kind of soldier a propaganda artist would dream up.

But as time passes and the patrol trudges on, he starts to wonder if maybe it’s something else. Because there’s something about the recruit’s gaze that’s less challenging and more—assessing. He seems older and steadier than the rest of his unit, like he knows damn well what he can do. He doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. It’s a quieter confidence than the brash egotism Bucky had initially ascribed to him. And it makes him nervous as hell.

He’s so fixated on the unnerving gaze of the recruit that his awareness of his surroundings slips. He doesn’t notice anything’s wrong until the CO at the head of the patrol falls. The entire group watches as his dead body hits the ground.

_Shit_.

There’s a stunned silence that hangs for a bare second before it’s broken by the crack of the rifle shot. Chaos breaks out. Most of the recruits drop down to their bellies, hoping that the surrounding underbrush will hide them from view. A couple freeze up completely. There are a few who dive for cover, but it’s only Bucky and the blond recruit who’d correctly identified the direction the sniper was firing from and chosen cover accordingly.

There shouldn’t be a sniper here at all. 

They’re close to the frontlines, but far enough away that no one in their right mind would dare delve this far into enemy territory alone.  Firing on this patrol serves no tactical advantage beyond temporary havoc. And it gives the sniper’s position away. The angle had been high, which means that the sniper had hidden himself amongst the trees. It’s very telling of what kind of combatant they’re dealing with. Sure, you’re harder to detect from that height, but there’s no chance of escaping once you’ve been caught. 

This isn’t a calculated attack. It’s a suicide mission.

One of the still standing recruits collapses to the ground. The sound of the rifle shot follows a few seconds after.

“Goddammit! Take cover, you idiots!” Bucky yells at the rest of the group.

Those who are hunched on the ground stare at him wide-eyed, but don’t move. He curses silently. The Americans don’t cover counter-sniper tactics in basic, so they don’t know how to even begin to handle enemy sniper fire. They think that the surrounding underbrush is enough to hide them. But really, they’re just sitting ducks for the sniper to pick off at his leisure. 

And Bucky can’t do anything but shout at them fruitlessly, not unless he breaks cover to drag them back to a safer position. Which will definitely get himself killed. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” he hisses out. There’s really only one thing left to do at this point to save all their asses.

Bucky suspects that this particular one’s young, probably barely trained by the Hitlerjugend before being shoved out onto the battlefield. He’d likely been left behind as the frontlines shifted, his only purpose to do as much damage as possible before he’s killed. It’s a sorry existence, but it sure as hell means trouble for the rest of them. This kid’s gonna keep firing on them until someone kills him first. He’s not going to stop like a more experienced sniper would. He’s not going to retreat to a safer position and live to fight another day. And they can’t afford to wait for him to run out of ammo playing target practice on the recruits.

Luckily, two shots are more than enough for Bucky to get a good idea of the enemy sniper’s position. The direction of the bullets, the delay between the bullet and the sound of the rifle shot—roughly four hundred meters north-east of their position. 

He eases his own rifle off his back and positions it onto the tree trunk. The other sniper’s too focused on the recruits out in the open. He’s not going to pay attention to Bucky half-hidden by the overhanging branches, peering down the sights of his rifle, watching for any tell-tale movements that’ll give the other sniper away. Bucky takes a breath to settle himself.

There’s a flurry of movement in his peripheral vision as one of the recruits dashes out from behind the shelter of the tree. It’s the blond one who’d been watching him earlier. 

Bucky swears violently and shouts, “Are you trying to get yourself killed, ya moron!?” but forces himself to keep his eyes locked on where the other sniper should be.

The recruit ignores him, running to where his comrades huddle on the ground, yelling at them to, _Move! Goddammit!_ He grabs at two of the other recruits’ arms, hauling them to their feet and shoving them to where Bucky and the others are hiding. The others start to follow once they see someone up and moving. And yeah, the idiot’s saving lives, but he’s also making himself an _obvious fucking target_.

And sure enough, he really is too tempting a mark to ignore because Bucky spots the movement of a body shifting, the tell-tale gleam of a scope. 

He adjusts his aim.

Fires.

Watches the body slump and fall out of its tree.

He sighs out a breath as the relief uncoils the muscles in his body.

 

* * *

 

Slowly, the other soldiers start to stand to stare bewildered at the dead sniper, and at Bucky. The idiot recruit broke cover turns to Bucky, and then slowly starts to raise his arm. It takes a moment for Bucky to realize what the man’s doing. He’s _saluting_ to him. And there’s a smile on his face as if his head hadn’t been about to be blown off by an enemy sniper.

Bucky stalks towards him, more pissed off than he’s ever been in his life. “ _What the hell was that?_ ” he snaps.

Some of the other soldiers shrink away from him. Smart of them because he’s very much heavily armed. The idiot doesn’t show nearly as much sense as the rest of them. Instead, he settles his weight back on his heels, casual as you please, that fucking smile still fixed on his face. Not a hair on his head is out of place. He looks like something off a recruitment poster, and somehow this pisses Bucky off even more. He has no right to look this attractive and put-together when everyone else is covered in sweat and mud from the earlier confrontation.

“Nice shot.”

“You broke cover like a suicidal _moron_.” Bucky gets right in the idiot’s space, glaring up at him. “What the fuck were you trying to pull, playing the goddamn hero?”

He shrugs, glances over to where the body of the sniper had landed. “You needed to get eyes on him, right?”

That brings Bucky up short. “I—what?”

“The sniper. We needed to flush him out for you to take him down.”

“You’re not supposed to use yourself as fucking bait!”

“It was either that or let him fire on everyone else. At least, we knew who he’d be targeting.”

“And what if I hadn’t seen him in time?” Bucky snarls. “What if I hesitated? What if I fucking missed? What then? Your head would’ve been blown clean off your neck.”

The recruit snorts. “You would’ve gotten him in time. Your pride wouldn’t have allowed anything less.” He jerks a nod at Bucky’s rifle, slung loosely over his shoulder. “It’s a solid weapon. Soviet-make, right? Don’t see them too often in American hands. Now how did a recruit manage to land himself a rifle like that?”

Bucky stares at him, gobsmacked. Because there’s no way in hell a recruit fresh from basic would be able to recognize a Mosin-Nagant. They’re not exactly common these days, considering they were mostly used on the Eastern Front back when the Nazis were moving in on the Soviet Union. They’re damn good weapons—accurate as hell, easy to maintain, sturdy enough to survive the goddamn apocalypse—but not exactly something a regular American soldier could be expected to identify on sight.

There’s no way in _hell_ this man’s just another recruit. How had Bucky not noticed earlier? His eyes flick over the man’s pristine uniform—ill-fitted, freshly pressed, obviously recently issued. His rifle’s a brand-spanking new M1 Garand that’s seen very little beyond factory walls. His gear practically screams inexperience, and it’d been all too easy for Bucky to write him off and turn his attention elsewhere. Meanwhile, he never noticed how well-worn and thoroughly broken-in his boots are. The practiced eye with which he sweeps the area around him. The lethality underpinning his every move. 

Bucky groans. Of all the patrols to sneak into, he had to end up in the one with the fucking _spy_. Neither of them had any goddamn business being in a group of fresh-faced recruits. It’s no wonder he saw through Bucky the moment he set eyes on him.

“Guess I just got lucky,” he grits out.

“And I suppose that shot was all just luck too, huh?”

Bucky scowls at him. “Something like that.”

“And you just happened to be lucky enough to know exactly where the sniper was hiding. Lucky that you knew how to accurately fire a rifle you had no training on. Lucky that you landed a shot on an enemy almost half a kilometer away. What are the odds, huh?”

“I’d say they’re about the same as you knowing exactly how much _luck_ it’d take for me to pull it off.”

The spy grins. “Well, I guess we’re both unusually blessed then.” He leans forward, something suspiciously like a twinkle in his eye when he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I won’t tell the brass about how ‘lucky’ you are if you don’t.”

The spy casts a side-long look at Bucky and continues on, “Anyway, I really am grateful that you happened to tag along, you know. Things could’ve gotten a whole lot uglier if you hadn’t been here. These men have you to thank for saving them.”

“What does it matter to you?” Bucky snaps. 

“I do care about human lives.” The man’s gaze settles on a recruit standing at the edge of the group. Really, he’s barely more than a kid. Bucky doesn’t want to _know_ what his real age is. “So yes, I’m thankful that you kept the casualties to a minimum.”

His mouth widens into something more genuine, all straight white teeth and the barest hint of a dimple. The honesty in it is something that’s completely unexpected. And for a moment, it’s almost enough to convince Bucky that he truly does care what happened to these kids. That maybe he might be a decent man underneath it all.

“It was nothing,” Bucky grumbles, looking away. His irritation flares until his cheeks and the tips of his ears are flushed with it. “Just saving my own neck.”

“Of course,” the spy says.

“What the hell’s a fucking spy doing here anyway?”

“Stretching his legs. And I’m not a spy.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe any of that?”

“I think you’ll believe whatever you want to believe.”

“Who the hell are you even with? You sound American.” His eyes narrow. Not just generically American. He has a fucking Brooklyn accent. Too perfect to be anything but genuine. Bucky could identify those rhythms and vowels in his sleep. 

That just makes him all the more dangerous. An American-born spy hiding amongst American soldiers. It means he’s not an agent of a war between nations. It’s gotta be something else, a different war entirely. Bucky would know. He’s fighting one of those wars himself.

“I told you, I’m not a spy,” the spy insists.

Too blundering to be an Assassin, Bucky thinks. He’s a bad liar and far too reckless. Assassins evaluate the situation carefully before stepping in. Not a Templar either. Bucky can usually recognize a comrade on sight. And there’s only one other organization operating in this war that cares little for national ties but still has every reason to work against the Allies.

“ _Jesus fucking_ _Christ_ , you’re one of HYDRA’s, aren’t you?”

The spy blinks hard and sputters. “ _HYDRA?_ ”

Bucky’s eyes narrow at that reaction. 

The spy goes still when Bucky’s pistol comes to a stop just in front of his forehead. “Are you really going to shoot me right in front of these kids?”

“They’ll get over it,” Bucky snarls, cocking the hammer.

“I’m not one of HYDRA’s.”

“Funny, I don’t believe you.”

The spy moves his hands in slow soothing motions. “If I was in HYDRA’s pocket, why the hell would I try to save these kids’ lives?”

Bucky hesitates but shakes his head vigorously. “To solidify your credibility and trustworthiness. That sniper never should’ve been here in the first place. It’s pretty fucking suspicious that he attacked a patrol that you just so happened to be in.”

“At the cost of my own life?”

“If the sniper was on your side, you were never in any danger.”

“Are you even listening to yourself? When has HYDRA ever used tactics like this?”

Bucky snorts. “Infiltrating the ranks of their enemies to fulfill their own agenda. You’re right, that doesn’t sound like them _at all_. If not HYDRA, who the hell could you possibly be working for?”

“The Strategic Science Reserve,” he says levelly, his hands flexing. 

“An SSR agent spying on American troops? Try another one.”

“I keep telling you _I’m not a spy_. I’m here examining potential recruits for a weapons development program. It was supposed to be done _clandestinely_ , but guess that’s out now. We didn’t want to fuck up the results with soldiers looking to get their hands on flashy experimental guns. You can check with Colonel Phillips if you don’t believe me.”

Bucky studies him, his finger hovering uncertainly over the trigger. Because that actually sounds...extremely plausible. The SSR have always been kind of a weird branch of the military. They operate by their own rules and agendas, and the Allies mostly leave them to it because they have a pet eccentric genius that actually delivers results. And Bucky has intel that Colonel Phillips is the army liaison for the SSR, so it would make a lot of sense that they would come sniffing for weapon testers amongst his men.

He doesn’t quite lower his pistol just yet. “I think I will have that chat with the colonel,” he says, carefully watching for a reaction to him calling his bluff. Not that Bucky’s actually going to talk to the colonel and draw attention to the fact that _he_ himself has no business being on base. 

But the man doesn’t even blink. It’s only then that Bucky begrudgingly sticks his pistol back in its harness. So what if he’s a paranoid bastard? It’s saved his skin dozens of times before.

“Well, that almost got very ugly,” the man comments lightly.

Bucky scowls. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s understandable all things considered. HYDRA’s a nasty bunch.” The man pauses and snorts, then raises his voice to address the rest of the unit. “Let’s get you lot back to base, hmm?”

Bucky groans. Right, there’s a whole group of no doubt extremely traumatized recruits standing right there gaping at him.

It doesn’t even come as a surprise when the man disappears the moment they get back. Now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up, he can’t help but admire the brazenness of deliberately drawing enemy fire to save everyone else. It’s a brand of heroism that he’s too jaded to think of as anything but idiocy. But he remembers a time when it was something he longed for—quick-thinking, bravery, selflessness. The part of him that’s still a little bit too naive is grateful that there really are men who could be called heroes fighting this war.

But Bucky has more important matters to concern himself with. For one, he still has to finish preparations for the Assassin’s arrival.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a week since the sniper incident, and Bucky can’t help but think that he’s in exactly the same position as he was before. Except this time, he’s peering down the sights of his rifle at a target significantly more dangerous than an eighteen-year-old German sniper left to die by his comrades.

The Assassin had arrived as scheduled only a couple days ago. It’d been—interesting, standing amidst an indifferent crowd of soldiers, watching a man dressed in tights awkwardly spout propaganda, knowing that he was one of the most dangerous Assassins the Templars ever had to deal with. Honestly, Bucky hadn’t even really believed that the poor schmuck wearing a comic book character’s costume was an Assassin at all. But well, crouching here, staring down the sights of his rifle at the Assassin ghosting through the forest in full regalia—he sure as hell believes it now.

There’s a grace to the way the man moves amidst the trees, something about his stride that coaxes the eye to slide away from him to some other distraction. It’s the smooth gliding walk of the Assassins, drilled into them through relentless training, never failing to mark them out as a threat to Bucky’s eyes. A cold shiver runs down his spine. There’s always been something uncanny about Assassins—the heavy knowledge that every one of them has killed dozens, hundreds of people in cold blood.

He calms his breathing. He’d done all that he needed to get ready for this moment. He’s finished all the meticulous scouting and preparation he needs to do the job properly. More than anything else, this all depends on whether he can get his shot off before the Assassin notices him. And that’s not an easy thing. Bucky’s trained to be observant and invisible—every sniper has to be if they’re to survive long—but the Assassins out-do even the most seasoned of them. They have an uncanny, almost supernatural sense of their surroundings, and they can disappear like so much smoke at any moment. It’s like hunting a ghost. And no matter how good Bucky is at what he does, he’s still only human.

The fact that he’d never managed to get close enough to the Assassin to properly see his face makes it somehow worse. When Bucky had been young and new to the Templars, he heard the rumors that the Assassins didn’t have faces underneath those hoods of theirs. He doesn’t believe those superstitions anymore, but a twinge of the old fear still twists in his stomach. He never really has seen the Assassin’s face in all his time spent in surveillance of him. He’d always been covered by that ridiculous mask when he was on stage, and Bucky could never seem to find him when he wasn’t performing. The fact that he managed to catch sight of the Assassin slipping away from base at all was a fluke more than anything else. 

Bucky shifts his rifle carefully, forcing his mind to run through the math of it. Gravity, wind, the earth’s curvature, distance, where the Assassin will be by the time the bullet arrives—the familiar calculations help ground him, and some of the fear sloughs off. Bucky slides his finger down to the trigger.

The Assassin stops moving. Bucky stills, breath stopping in his throat.

Then he turns his head to look right at Bucky. 

He curses silently and suppresses the urge to run. Instead, he carefully eases away into a crouch and slips away from the foxhole he’d tucked himself into, letting the breeze tugging at some overhanging branches disguise the movement. He wouldn’t have survived as long as he had if he didn’t know how to get the hell out after his location’s been discovered. He’d chosen this foxhole specifically for its escape routes—low to the ground, surrounded by obscuring brush, multiple exit points. Getting pinned down in one position spells death.

He slides out of the foxhole, keeping low to the ground, crouching and crawling until he’s gotten a good distance away. Even if he’s been spotted, he’s a good half kilometer away from the Assassin and they’re short range fighters. He at least has a decent amount of time to relocate before the other man catches up. It’s why the higher ups sent Bucky after all. Snipers are the only men who even have half a hope of getting out of a confrontation with an Assassin alive. 

Bucky rechecks the Assassin’s position, and of course, the man’s completely disappeared from view. He shudders. Bucky’s never been much of a religious man, but it’s enough to make anyone at least believe in the Devil. He keeps moving, scanning the surrounding forest for any sign of the Assassin. Any unusual movements in the underbrush, the glint of metal, the flutter of loose cloth. If he can just catch sight of the Assassin again, maybe he can finish this, and the mission won’t be a complete disaster.

But maybe it’s better to just cut his losses and retreat entirely. His primary advantage had been the fact that the Assassin hadn’t known he was there, but now that he’s been spotted, he’s at a significant disadvantage. Bucky can’t help but be aware that even now, the Assassin is very likely closing in on him. His superiors won’t be happy that he cut and run, but he’d rather save his skin than continue trying to complete a doomed mission.

His mind made up, Bucky turns and begins to slowly, painstakingly make his way to the more well-traveled regions of the forest. There should be a patrol finishing up their rounds about now. He can slip back into the main camp with them.

And that’s when a body slams into his back, driving him into the ground. All the air punches out of his lungs, stopping him from crying out. The man’s full weight presses down on him. How the hell had the Assassin found him so _fast?_ Bucky knows he’s damn good at covering his retreat. It should’ve been impossible for anyone to locate him this quickly. 

Bucky heaves up against the Assassin, scrabbling for his knife. But before he can even reach it, it’s wrenched away from him and sent spinning into the vegetation. His pistol and rifle follow soon after, leaving Bucky well and truly at the mercy of the Assassin.

He used to think that he’d long since lost his fear of death after narrowly evading it so many times. He’s not cocky enough to think his luck would hold out forever, and yet he barely keeps from sucking in a panicked breath when he feels the cold press of the Assassin’s blade against the back of his neck.

For a moment, there’s a stillness behind him, a few muttered words that Bucky can’t make out over the frantic thumping of his heart. Even if he doesn’t hear them clearly, he knows very well what they are. A prayer, an apology, a murmured hope for peace in the afterlife—it’s a strange sensibility of the Assassins, a bizarre gesture of respect and humility in the last moments of their victim’s life. It always grated on Bucky, how hypocritical this belated stab at remorse is. Now it drives cold fear down his spine because he knows this will be the last thing he hears before the Assassin slides his blade home.

Except the man hesitates a few moments longer.

In Bucky’s peripheral vision, he can see a hand reach down and touch the pendant on the ground next to him. He swears colorfully and silently. Somehow, it’d work itself out from under his shirt during the struggle. If there was even the slimmest chance of the Assassin sparing his life, it’s sure as hell gone now. 

The others preferred to wear the symbol of their Order on a ring, but Bucky never much liked how it affected the way he gripped his rifle. And anyway, rings have a fatal tendency to snag at the worst times. He’d always thought the pendant was more discrete and less likely to get him killed because he could just hide it under his shirt. Ironic really, considering Bucky’s lying here with an Assassin right on top of him, the pendant out in the open as damning proof that he’s exactly the kind of person the Assassin will want to kill.

“You’re,” the Assassin says, and Bucky swears he sounds genuinely confused, “a Templar?”

“What gave it away,” he grumbles into the dirt, sarcasm edging into his voice despite his better judgment, “the part where I shot at you, or the goddamn obvious jewelry?”

The Assassin doesn’t reply, but neither does he slit Bucky’s throat, which is surprising all things considered. He just keeps pressing down on all the points of Bucky’s body to keep him immobilized. And really, it’s galling how easily he has Bucky pinned down. The bulk of him is surprising, but it sure as hell is doing a good job of keeping him thoroughly pinned him down. Bucky always assumed the Assassins were on the slimmer side, considering all the climbing and sneaking they have to do.

Eventually, the Assassin says, “And you’re with the Americans?” And Bucky’s sure now. The other man definitely sounds a little flabbergasted.

“Yeah, who else would I be fighting for? The goddamn Nazis?”

The Assassin doesn’t say anything, but it’s obvious that’s exactly what he thought.

Bucky sighs with frustration. Much as he likes the idea of keeping his neck intact, the Assassin’s waffling is starting to grate on him. He’s good as dead either way, and this bizarre questioning is only delaying the inevitable. The Assassins don’t take prisoners, every Templar knows this. Bucky’s also starting to become aware of how humiliating it is to spend so long being pinned face-down to the ground. Really, he thought the way he’d go would at least be quicker and more dignified than _this_.

“Does it really matter which side of the war I’m on? I’m a Templar, you’re an Assassin. We’ve been slaughtering each other for centuries. So would you quit dithering and _fucking kill me already?_ ”

There’s a pause. Bucky’s about to snap out something else when finally, a heavy blow lands on the back of his head,. As his consciousness fades, Bucky can’t help but marvel that he had to actually _ask_ to be killed before the Assassin finished the goddamn job properly.

 

* * *

 

Bucky doesn’t know what to expect when he wakes, but the damp and dimness of a cellar is not it. Hell, he’s surprised he woke up at all. Bucky was expecting to wake up somewhere more along the lines of heaven or hell. More likely hell if he’s being honest.

There’s not much information to draw from the room itself. He doesn’t know how long he was unconscious, but he doubts the Assassins had time to move him far. So he’s probably in an Italian village behind Allied lines. His hands and legs are bound to a sturdy wooden chair, and after testing the give of the rope, he can tell that the knots are expertly tied. Not that he expected anything less than utter devastating efficacy. The Assassins as a group may be small and disorganized, but they sure as hell know the business of violence.

The only source of light is one naked bulb flickering weakly above him, casting strange shadows throughout the cellar. So it takes Bucky longer than he’d like to admit to notice the twin figures watching him from the corner of the room. It’s honestly embarrassing from a professional standpoint. 

The Assassins step forward into the light once it becomes clear that Bucky’s noticed them, but remain completely silent. Maybe it’s a tactic to unsettle him, and in all honesty, it’s working. There’s just something about the unnaturally deep shadows cast by their hoods that set his skin prickling. They really do look like something out of a ghost story. Human figures with only half-faces. No eyes, just a nose and a grim mouth. 

The fact that he doesn’t know what the hell they want from him makes it worse. Bucky’s trapped alone amongst Assassins, waiting for whatever it is they plan to do to him. Nothing the other Templars ever said even hinted that this might’ve been an eventuality. The outcomes of encounters with Assassins had always been simple—either the Templar dies, or the Assassin dies before they can land the killing blow. 

But Bucky’s never been one to waste his time with mind games if he can help it, so he’s the first to break the silence. “Didn’t think your kind were the type to torture prisoners for information.” That had been something he’d almost respected about the Assassins. Regardless of how ruthless they were, their targets at least died cleanly. That counts for something in wars like this, where easy deaths are a mercy more than anything else. 

“And your assumptions are correct,” one of the Assassins replies. The tones of her voice are middle-class British, well-educated with a hard edge of pragmatism that immediately puts Bucky on his guard.

“Then what the hell is this?”

“Information gathering.”

Bucky scoffs. “Call it what it is. It’s a goddamn interrogation. I don’t give a shit about technicalities.”

The Assassin inclines her head in acknowledgment. “You’re a soldier fighting for the Allies, and yet you’re a Templar.”

And Bucky has no idea why this is such a sticking point to the Assassins. First, the one in the forest who’d taken him down, and now his interrogator. Templars and Assassins have always existed on the peripheries of these sorts of conflicts. Each has allied themselves with different factions in wartime, but they’ve always maintained a degree of distance no matter how deeply embedded into a particular faction. Their agendas extend beyond these momentary feuds.

Sure, the Templars have thrown their lot in with the Allies, but that’s because the Axis Powers have tipped so far into cruelty and extremism that they could not abide remaining a neutral party any longer. They’ve never cared for national allegiance. It’s always been about maintaining order and ensuring that neither side of the conflict went too far.

And as far as Bucky knows, the Assassins’ only ideology is serving themselves. They put even less stock in issues of nationality and ideology than the Templars do. They have always placed the interests of their Brotherhood above all other concerns. They do what’s necessary to serve their own agenda, and they pay little attention to much beyond that. The Assassins sow instability and chaos wherever they go. The ramifications of their actions don’t matter to them as long as their Brotherhood is protected. 

And that’s the core of their centuries-long feud. Templars kill Assassins because to let them operate unimpeded would be to invite catastrophic destabilization of the social order. Assassins kill Templars because they present a fundamental threat to the continuation of their Brotherhood. So Bucky has no idea why it would even matter to them which side of the war a lone Templar happened to be on.

“I could be an American soldier. I could also be a Nazi spy. In the end, does it really make a difference to you? I’m a Templar regardless of what side of the war I’m on.”

“He’s not with the Germans,” the other Assassin says, speaking up for the first time. There’s still fresh mud splattering his clothes. He’s the one Bucky fought in the forest earlier.

“Again, what the hell does it matter that I’m with the Americans?” he snaps.

The man looks at him for a long moment. Even though Bucky can’t see his eyes from underneath that damn hood, he can still feel his gaze is like a physical touch prickling on his skin. It leaves him feeling strangely exposed, like the man can just look at Bucky and uncover every one of his secrets. 

“It matters because it means that our interests may be more aligned than we initially believed,” the woman replies.

And that’s…extremely telling. It says that the Assassins may have also allied themselves, however tangentially, with the Allies. That for once, both Templars and Assassins are fighting for the same cause. And it means that— 

“You want me to help you,” Bucky says, flatly incredulous.

“Yes.”

“And why would I even consider helping you?”

It’s the man who responds. “Because Templar or not, I believe you’re a good man.” 

There’s a certainty to the way the man says this that sets Bucky on edge. They don’t know each other, and good men are hard to find in times like this. The grating assumption that all Templars are somehow intrinsically evil aside, why the hell would this man have any reason to believe Bucky is even remotely trustworthy? 

He squints suspiciously at him. “And what the hell makes you think that?”

The man looks at his companion for a moment who stiffens a little and shakes her head minutely. Their gazes lock in some silent argument for long minutes before she sighs. He nods and takes a step forward into the pool of light cast by the lone bulb. Bucky tenses when he both his hands start to rise as if to reach for him. But instead, the Assassin’s hands keep rising until he’s grasping at the edges of his hood.

Then he pulls it down, revealing his face. For a moment, it’s hard to make out his features in the dim lighting. But slowly, the Bucky’s able to discern the glint of blond hair, a strong brow, and a square jaw—a face that’s handsome to the point of being utterly aggravating.

“You’re the idiot SSR agent who jumped into the line of enemy fire.”

The woman groans and mutters something unflattering. Some distant part of Bucky’s glad that at least _someone_ understands how utterly stupid that move was.

The Assassin just grins. “It’s a highly effective tactic. Worked on you, didn’t it?”

Bucky feels a rush of heat rise to his face because _fuck,_ he’s right. The Assassin really had located him precisely because he’d made himself a target and baited Bucky into revealing himself. Even after seeing the exact same trick used barely a week before, he’d _still_ managed to fall for it himself. Christ, if his professional pride hadn’t been in tatters before, it sure as hell is now.

He’d had an entire conversation with his fucking target and hadn’t even realized it. Even if he had arrived earlier than the intel said he would, that was just embarrassing. And the Assassin had spotted him almost right off the bat. That was why he’d been watching Bucky the entire time they were on that patrol. 

“You knew who I was since the beginning. You were _toying_ with me.”

And there’s a single instant where the Assassin hesitates. It’s not something Bucky would take note of in anyone else, but this man isn’t just anyone. So he _hadn’t_ known who Bucky was when they first met. He doesn’t know what the hell to make of that. If the Assassin hadn’t been watching him because he was a Templar, then what was the reason?

“You saved the lives of those men,” the man says instead.

Bucky slots the information away to think on later. “And you could’ve just as easily taken out that sniper. Hell, you could’ve easily disarmed me when I had a gun pointed at your head. So why the _fuck_ didn’t you?”

“I could’ve. But a lot of people would’ve died in the time it took me to get close enough to stop him. I wasn’t lying when I said I was grateful to you.” He smiles ruefully. “And I was curious about whether you’d actually shoot me.”

The woman groans loudly.

“I would’ve,” Bucky snaps. “And I find it hard to believe that an _Assassin_ cares about whether someone lives or dies.”

“We’ve never killed senselessly. We value the weight of a human life more than anyone else.” There’s a frown wrinkling the man’s brow.

Bucky scoffs at that but doesn’t argue the point further. He doubts anything a Templar says would actually change their minds. “You still haven’t given me a reason why I’d ever consider helping the Assassins.”

The man studies him for a long time, his gaze assessing. “Does the word ‘Azzano’ mean anything to you?” he asks.

Bucky’s eyes widen.

The woman cuts in smoothly. “We’re looking to take the facility down shortly, and we could use a man of your skills.You understand how difficult a mission like this would be. It would be prudent to seek out allies for this, even amongst,” she pauses minutely, “adversaries.”

And goddammit, they have Bucky hooked, and they _know_ it. With that whole ridiculous confrontation earlier, of course, they’d know the fastest way to get to Bucky is by dangling the chance to strike HYDRA in front of his nose. He gave himself away the moment he pointed his gun at the Assassin’s head. 

But that doesn’t even matter at this point. The opportunity to crack Azzano has been something Bucky’s been searching for since the moment he first heard word of it. Regardless of the Assassins’ true agenda, he can’t let this opportunity go. 

No one’s been able to move on it because of how far behind enemy lines it is. No Templar could even dream of successfully taking it down, but…maybe a team of trained Assassins could. 

“So we’re agreed, you’ll assist us on this mission?” the woman asks.

Bucky narrows his eyes. “And if I say no? Your kind aren’t exactly known for mercy.”

“You think this is a choice between helping us and death?” the man blurts out, obviously distressed.

Bucky rolls his eyes and glances down at himself. “Templar, remember? Don’t lie, you’ve killed people for less.”

The man stares at him with wide blue eyes, and the naked concern on his face is almost enough to make Bucky feel bad about his callousness. How did a man as soft as this ever become an Assassin? 

“Hard as it is to believe, given our trade, we don’t take death lightly,” the woman cuts in smoothly. “If we can afford to let someone live without harm to ourselves, we will.”

“Again, I’m a fucking Templar. What part of that is so hard to miss? We’re very much in the business of harm to your lot.”

She chuckles. “Well, yes. But to be frank, you don’t pose much of a threat to us. You know the face of one of our operatives, and not much more than that. You know we’re interested in Azzano, but you don’t know why. By the time you get that information to the Templars, we’ll long be finished with our business there. You won’t have much luck with tracking us down after that.”

Bucky bristles at being dismissed so easily. “I’ll have you know—”

“Would you prefer that we thought you were a large enough threat to be eliminated?” she says, arching an eyebrow at him.

“This would be the second time he asked to be killed,” the man comments. “And you said _I_ had a death wish.”

Christ, these people are aggravating. Bucky groans and thunks his head against the back of the chair. “Fine, _yes_. I’ll help you.”

She nods and says, “I suppose that makes us allies for now. Peggy Carter, at your service.” Bucky can’t help but notice that she makes no move to lower her hood and reveal her face to him.

“Steve Rogers,” the man says. “Nice to finally properly meet you.”

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. He sighs. “I’m Bucky Barnes. Now can someone fucking untie me?”

 

* * *

 

There’s always been an air of something deeply nasty about Azzano ever since rumors of it started circulating months ago. Even the tamest stories are sinister. Bucky’s spent a long time gathering intel on the facility, and most of the whispers involve the worst kind of medical experimentation on Allied POWs. Even without confirmation from the higher-ups amongst the Templars, Bucky would’ve known it was one of HYDRA’s. It has all the horrifying trademarks.

The Templars despise them for the delight they seem to take in inflicting unimaginable cruelty on anything and everything within their power. And Bucky’s probably the most zealous of the Templars in how much he wants to see HYDRA destroyed. Any chance to strike at them, hinder them, sabotage them is one he gladly takes.

Bucky grips his rifle tighter to quiet his nerves. He’d half-hoped that he would only be needed to keep watch outside, take out any sentries patrolling around the facility. But of course, nothing is nearly that easy. Instead, he’s stalking through the underbelly of Azzano with Steve gliding ahead of him, barely more than a dark shadow.

Even knowing that they’re fighting on the same side for now, it’s still off-putting watching him move. So far, the mission had been uneventful. They’d only run into a few guards, and Steve had dispatched them with an ease that frankly terrified Bucky. He’d just slid right up to them, and with a quiet snick of the hidden blades strapped to his wrists, he killed them. They all die before they even realized anything was wrong.

On the main factory floor, Bucky positions himself in a shadowed portion of a cat-walk high above, watching Steve through the scope of his rifle. He moves quickly, maneuvering around some of the guards, silently taking down others. All is silent, save the clunk and whir of machinery. Somewhere in another part of this grim place, Peggy is creeping towards the prisoner cells. And aside from her, they have no back-up. 

Only three people to carry out a mission that would’ve called for more than a dozen Templar agents. This is how the Assassins have managed to keep pace with the Templars throughout centuries of conflict. Templars may be superior in numbers, organization, influence, and funding. They have always moved history through slower bureaucratic processes, maneuvering key players and influencing outcomes of decisions, moving the needle in small increments closer and closer to their goals. But in a single opportune moment, one Assassin can undo a lifetime’s worth of Templar work.

Bucky’s only ever seen the aftermath. He’s heard whispers of the path they carved through the Templar ranks. Entire sections of their Order would collapse seemingly overnight thanks to one well-placed blow by the Assassins. No matter how well-functioning an organization is, it’s disturbingly easy to disrupt it entirely by eliminating key leaders. It’s a lesson Bucky’s long taken from the Assassins, but never to the same effectiveness as them.

And it suddenly occurs to Bucky that he has a high-ranking Assassin in his sights, completely vulnerable and exposed. He could kill this man, Bucky thinks. Easily. It’s a shot that even the most inexperienced of snipers could land. And he’d even be able to get away before Peggy realized anything was wrong. A single gunshot wouldn’t seem amiss in a mission like this. He could be miles away before the agreed-upon regroup time.

And what was a single HYDRA facility compared to one of the most dangerous Assassins the Templars have ever come across? Arguably, this man has done much more damage to the Templar cause than one ancillary research facility ever has and probably ever will. Bucky had been blinded by the prospect of finally taking Azzano down, but had he really made the right choice by passing on the opportunity to eliminate a direct threat to the Templars? He’ll never have a chance at this again.

There’s a flicker of movement in the peripheries of his vision, and Bucky smoothly adjusts his aim, fires. A body drops. The shot breaks the silence entirely, and every guard still alive on the floor snaps to attention, searching for the source of the threat. A bullet pings off the metal railing right next to Bucky, and he quickly ducks behind a pillar to take cover. He presses his back against it and takes a breath.

He’d watched an enemy step into view, his rifle aimed at an ally—if Bucky had just left things be, Steve would’ve died. He wouldn’t have even needed to take the shot himself. Steve hadn’t seen the guard taking aim at him. He’d been too occupied with tracking the movements of another, waiting for the right moment to strike. 

It’d been a completely instinctive decision. Eliminate the threat. Save his comrade. Save the Assassin. Bucky breathes in again. He just saved the Assassin’s life.

There’s shouting from the factory floor, and Bucky fumbles out his trench scope to check the situation. The guards have found Steve, surrounding him on all sides. He looks completely composed despite the fact that he faces certain death. Bucky swears and leans out of the corridor to fire another shot. They dive for cover, and in that moment of chaos, Steve leaps forward. He takes down two men, using his forward momentum to drive his hidden blades into their throats. It’s a grim sight. Bucky drops another guard. And then another. 

Finally, they’ve cleared the floor entirely. The sound of gunfire and shouting will draw in guards from other parts of the facility, but they’re safe for now. Steve turns to Bucky’s position, his head tilting ever so slightly. He can’t see the man’s face under the shadow of his hood, but somehow, Bucky just knows he’s smiling up at him. 

Steve jogs over to one of the large machines just under the catwalk Bucky’s on. And through a combination of jumping and clambering, he somehow manages to scale what should’ve been an impossible-to-climb wall. Steve pulls himself up onto the catwalk next to Bucky, springing lightly to his feet. He’s not even out of breath, the smug bastard. Bucky scowls at him, and Steve’s smile widens into a grin.

“Fucking Assassins,” he mutters before stalking away.

They sweep the control rooms and labs at the heart of the facility. There’s the sounds of muffled chaos in the distance. Presumably from Peggy wreaking havoc with the escaped POWs. Bucky watches Steve’s back as he rifles through the drawers and cabinets, sweeping the various files and research notes with a cursory eye. He doesn’t even really seem to be conscious of the fact that Bucky could just whip his pistol out now and shoot him. And for reasons he still can’t fathom why, he doesn’t.

“So why Azzano?” he asks.

Steve doesn’t even look up from the files he’s poking through. “Why not Azzano?”

Bucky snorts. It’s not much of an answer, but it was worth a shot. “It just seems like a weird target for the Assassins. There’s not much of a tactical advantage in striking this place.” 

Anyone who cares about this place does so on principle more than anything else. A facility like this is an affront to every standard of human decency even in wartime, but it also serves next to no purpose strategically. It’s a facility that seemingly exists only for the sake of inflicting cruelty on Allied POWs under the thin pretext of scientific advancement. But it’s too well-fortified to be worth taking down for moral sensibilities alone.

Steve pauses and turns back to him. There’s something about the set of his mouth that Bucky just knows he’s frowning. He’s almost glad that the hood is hiding Steve’s eyes. His distressed expressions are enough to make Bucky feel almost ashamed of himself. As if he’s hurting Steve. As if he’s the one who’d done wrong by telling the truth as he knows it.

“You know this place’s reputation,” Steve says quietly. “Why wouldn’t we want to make all of this,” he gestures at the research notes on new gruesome ways to torture a man, “stop?”

“I didn’t think you’d care.”

The lines around Steve’s mouth deepens. “Do you really think we’re so monstrous that all this wouldn’t matter to us?”

The almost bewildered way that Steve says it. Like he hadn’t ever thought that anyone would think this of the Assassins. And Bucky doesn’t want to say more. He wants to reassure Steve that everything is as clean and nice as he seems to believe it to be. But if Steve’s been blindly following the Assassins’ agenda, it’d be wrong of Bucky to simply let him continue in ignorance. Even if it hurts him.

“I think you’ve always cared about your own affairs,” he says. “The Assassins look out for their own, regardless of who might get in the way, who might get hurt in the process. So yeah, I didn’t think it mattered to you.”

“I see.” Steve takes a breath. “We fight for no cause but our own, huh?”

“Don’t tell me now that your lot came here solely for _altruistic_ reasons.”

“Is that really so hard to believe?”

“If that were the case, you wouldn’t be here digging through HYDRA’s records, obviously looking for something. There’s something here that’s _useful_ to you. If you didn’t have another agenda, you’d be down in the holding cells getting as many POWs out alive as you can with Peggy. So don’t act like that’s the _only_ reason you’re here.”

“And maybe I’m looking for information for a higher cause.”

Bucky snorts. “Like what?”

“Their names, their faces, their goals. How they operate.”

And that shuts him up. Steve’s looking at him, his expression impossible to read under that hood. The question is on the tip of his tongue, _Why the hell would you tell me that?_ Because that’s big. That’s more information on the plans of the Assassins than any Templar has managed to discover so far in this war. That’s too dangerous for someone like Bucky to ever know. He wants to shake Steve and yell at him for being so guileless, so _stupid_.

And it doesn’t even _matter_ at this point.

“You want to take them down. Completely,” Bucky says, still staggering from the heady truth of it. 

“Are you going to ask me why we’d want to?” Steve asks, and despite how the hood’s shadow hides his face, Bucky can just see the challenging glint in his eye.

“No.”

Because it all makes a disturbing amount of sense in hindsight. For maybe the first time, by some bizarre twist of fate, the Templars and the Assassins managed to find a common enemy without even realizing that they had. 

 

* * *

 

Three hours and a spectacular series of explosions later, they regroup in the forests outside Azzano, now in the company of give or take two hundred freed POWs. It’s an ordeal and a half to get soldiers from over a dozen different units from as many countries into some semblance of order. 

They do eventually get moving because they’re still too close for comfort to the smoldering ruins of Azzano. But it’s going to be a hard journey. It’s deep into the night, and the men are hungry and exhausted from being at HYDRA’s mercy for so long. They have no supplies but what the POWs grabbed as they ransacked the facility and what little the Assassins brought with them. He can already tell it’s going to be a hard march back to Allied lines. Still, they’ll make it. These soldiers wouldn’t have survived this long if they weren’t hardy and stubborn to the point of near insanity.

So they manage to make it another good few miles in the dark before stumbling to a stop and scrounging together something resembling a camp. A handful of small fires are started, and neither Bucky nor the Assassins have the heart to deny these men some warmth even though lighting beacons deep in Axis territory is bound to bring them trouble. 

And in the ordered chaos of two hundred people settling in for the night, Bucky takes his leave. It’s not running away. It’s more of a—tactical retreat. There’s been something distinctly _off_ that’s been itching at him since this whole mission wrapped up. 

The Assassins didn’t need him on a mission like this. They shouldn’t have brought him along at all.

At first, he really did believe they brought him on as a sort of calculated risk. There was a chance he could jeopardize the mission, but neither could they afford to forego the skills he offered. Good snipers are hard to find amongst the Allies. British snipers are excellent but few and far between, the French do fine but they’re not known for their marksmen, and the US training programs are an utter joke. The Soviets have some of the best snipers in the war, but they’re all fighting on the Eastern Front. Maybe it’s an arrogant thing to say, but Bucky knows he’s one of the damn best the Western Front has to offer.

But a mission like this didn’t call for a sniper at all. Most of the fighting was quiet, close-quarters, and highly mobile. Bucky got some good shots in, but very little about this called for his skillset specifically. It was an ideal mission for, well, an Assassin.

Bucky was an active liability on a mission like this. He’s a Templar for Christ’s sake. Why the hell would an Assassin ever trust him to have their back? Maybe Steve’s naive enough to let him tag along, but _Peggy?_ He might not know much about her, but he knows cunning when he sees it. There’s no way in hell she’d compromise a mission like this lightly. There are other factors at play, and he doesn’t like the sound of that one wit.

Steve’s a nice enough guy, but Bucky’s not stupid enough to think that means the Assassins don’t pose a serious danger to him. He’s not about to stick around long enough to find out what the Assassins really mean to do with him. He’s not survived the war as long as he did by not knowing when it’s time to get the hell out.

Traveling alone, he can move a lot faster than the rest of the group, so he should be able to get back to the American base, regroup, and find a way to get to London to contact his superiors long before the POWs arrive. And if nothing else, he managed to get some interesting intel on the Assassins. The identities of two of their top operatives for one, and the fact that they’re interested in Azzano, in HYDRA. It’ll hopefully help the Order piece together what it is the Assassins are truly planning.

At least, that’s what Bucky tries to tell himself is the reason why he agreed to help them. Why he never took the opportunity to kill Steve when his back was wide open to him.

This whole situation is…strange. Steve doesn’t think to guard himself at all around Bucky. He smiles and banters freely as if they’re lifelong comrades rather than strangers on opposite sides of a centuries-long war. And he knows saving the lives of a bunch of privates together isn’t enough to undo that kind of animosity. This whole thing makes Steve seem too trusting by half, almost naive. 

And worst of all, it’s _working_. Somehow. Bucky feels no urge to press his advantage. There’s a bizarre pull in him to return Steve’s confidence in kind. To prove that he’s exactly the man Steve thinks he is. Show him that his trust is not misplaced. He hates the Assassins, but somehow, amidst all of this, Steve has become separate from them in Bucky’s mind. It’s impossible to pretend otherwise when every instinct in him had somehow rewired itself to protect Steve, even from Bucky himself.

And Bucky knows he’s an Assassin, but—he knows Steve’s face now. He’s never seen an Assassin’s face before. He can’t throw Steve in with the rest of them as some half-faced, hooded monster. He’s inescapably human now. A man who plays fast and loose with his own life but not with the lives of others. A man who deals so honestly that it makes Bucky want to be better despite himself. How did a man like this ever become an Assassin?

Something drops onto his back, the force and weight of it forcing him to the ground for the second time in as many days. He lets out an _oomph_ as he lands. His assailant ends up on top of Bucky’s back, pinning his arms down with their knees.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Steve says.

Bucky groans. “I hate you.”

“Now where’re you sneaking off to in the middle of the night?”

“Taking a piss,” Bucky retorts, but the effect is somewhat blunted by the fact that he’s pressed face-down into the ground.

“You’re over a mile away from camp.”

“I like my privacy.”

There’s a sigh above him. “Bucky, why were you trying to leave?”

He doesn’t reply for a while. Here he is in much the same position as he was just a few days ago. Except this time, he’s not remotely afraid for his life. He should be. Christ, he should be scared shitless. But somehow Steve completely fucked up every survival instinct in his body.

“Let me up,” Bucky says.

“Bucky—”

“I’m not having this conversation with you fucking sitting on my back.”

The weight on him lifts off as Steve stands up.

Bucky pushes himself to his feet, scowling as he brushes off all the dry leaves and detritus from his front. It’s almost impossible to see in the dark, so he takes out his lighter and flicks on the flame. It casts a little flickering circle of light, making Steve look especially sinister with that hood on.

“Do you ever take that damn hood off? It’s starting to feel excessive.”

Steve huffs. “You’re stalling.” But he takes it down anyway. Something in Bucky loosens once he’s able to see his face again. Like this, it’s easier to just think of Steve as Steve without any unpleasant reminders of what he truly is.

“Why would you ask me to go with you on a mission like this?” Bucky asks.

Steve’s brows rise at the question. “Why wouldn’t I? You’ve proven yourself to be a helluva shot.”

“I’m a Templar.”

And Steve just looks at him. “I know.”

Bucky heaves out a sigh, resisting the urge to tear out his hair. Or throttle Steve’s unfairly perfect neck. “ _Both of us_ have every reason to stab each other in the back the moment the opportunity presents itself. No one in their right mind would’ve trusted me on a mission like this. Why risk it? Why introduce a near-guaranteed liability?”

“But you weren’t a liability. The fact that I’m standing here now is proof of that.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Bucky snaps. “There was no way to know for sure what I would’ve done. You didn’t need someone like me on this mission. This whole set-up is suspicious as hell, so forgive me for not wanting to stick around long enough to see what you _really_ have planned for me.”

Steve stares at him for a little while before rubbing a hand over his face. “Sometimes, I feel like you’re being difficult on principle.”

“Of course, I am!” Bucky snaps, throwing his hands up. “Why am I the only one who seems to remember that we’re in factions that’re all about killing each other! At least, Peggy has the right idea of it.”

“Peggy thinks I’m foolish for taking anything you say at face value.”

“Exactly!”

“So you’re upset because I trust you but I shouldn’t, and we should be trying to kill each other but we aren’t?”

“Yes!”

Steve groans. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s ridiculous because you have no sense at all.”

“I don’t think I’m the only one,” Steve mutters.

Bucky sighs and pinches his brow. “If you were in my position, would you really believe that the Assassin just out of nowhere decided that he liked and trusted you? That there were no ulterior motives at all?”

“ _God_ , Peggy’s going to kill me,” Steve groans, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Why does this have to be so complicated?”

Bucky just crosses his arms and scowls at Steve as he waffles for a while longer, pacing back and forth a little.

Finally, he stops and says, “How much do you know about Assassins? About how we work in the field?”

“I know how your kind fight,” Bucky says carefully. “I’ve seen the aftermath.”

Steve sighs. “So almost nothing at all.” He casts a frustrated look at Bucky. “Would it be enough to say that I wanted you on the mission because I trust you?” he asks—almost pleads. 

“No.”

“Right. Okay.” Steve takes a breath.

There’s something about the way he straightens up that feels—significant. A shiver of something nervous and anticipatory runs down Bucky’s spine. Because it seems like they’re on the verge of something big. Skating around secrets of the Assassins that no Templar has ever learned before. And somehow, for some reason, Steve’s about to tell him.

“There’s a certain—talent that some of us have,” Steve begins hesitantly. “Not everyone can quite grasp it, and some of us are better at it than others. But Assassins have a particular…eye for things. We see more than most.”

Bucky arches an eyebrow at him. “So you’re telling me that the rumors that your lot aren’t entirely human were actually true?”

“I’m about as human as you are. I think everyone would be able to do it with enough focus and proper training. The knowledge of how to cultivate the skill has been passed down since the very beginning of our Order. It used to be stronger. There were those who could catch glimpses of the past, listen to conversations from far away, or see through the eyes of another living thing. We call it the Eagle Vision. Nowadays, we mostly just get flickers of color if we’re concentrating hard enough. We see people. We see friends and foes. Some folks show up a little blue, some a little red, but with most people we don’t see anything at all.”

And then something clicks in Bucky’s head. “You _bastard_ , that’s how you spotted me. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how the hell you found me so quickly, and all along you’ve been cheating with your freaky magical vision.”

“I tell you one of the Brotherhood’s best kept secrets, and _that’s_ what you focus on?” Steve asks incredulously. 

“My professional pride’s taken a helluva beating over the past few days, so yes.”

“I can’t believe you.”

“That’s a handy trick of yours,” Bucky says, shaking his head. “Being able to spot a completely concealed enemy from half a kilometer away.” The things he could _do_ with a talent like that. “Besides, I don’t see how this has anything to do with you deciding to take me along on the mission to Azzano.”

“I’m still getting to that part, Jesus,” Steve says. “And no, it doesn’t really work like that. The range normally doesn’t extend that far. It’s just that—” he ducks his head. It’s hard to tell in the low light, but is he—blushing? “I don’t know why, but you show up differently in my vision.”

“Well, what do I look like to you?”

Steve looks at him, and for a moment, Bucky swears he can see his eyes flash gold. But they’re probably just reflecting the lighter’s flame. “A friend,” he says simply. 

“Me,” Bucky says slowly. “I look like a…friend to you?”

“You’re a blue so bright it makes everything else seem flat and grey by comparison. It’s like a beacon in the dark. That’s how I was able to find you.” Steve smiles a little. “And it’s also why I trust you. Because for some reason, an ability that has never failed me before tells me that you’re an ally to us. And an important one at that.”

“So what, your bullshit magical powers tell you that you can trust me, so you kidnap me and then invite me to join you on a high-risk mission?”

There’s a long pause, and Bucky watches with interest as Steve’s face twists with obvious embarrassment. It’s fascinating how bad he is at hiding his emotions. He’s practically an open book to Bucky. Maybe it’s the hood. He’s never had to learn how to control his expressions because that hood hides his face all the damn time.

Finally, Steve says, “I may have—panicked.”

“You bludgeoned me over the head and dragged me into some godforsaken wine cellar for interrogation…because you panicked.”

“I didn’t know you were a Templar when I met you! I thought you were just a normal American soldier flouting orders and screwing with the green recruits because you were bored. Then you turned around and saved all their lives, and I was just about ready to beg Peggy to _recruit_ you.” And wasn’t that just the cherry on top of this whole bizarre situation. The Assassins had actually been considering asking him to join them. “Then you showed up again, but this time, you were _shooting_ at me. And you turned out to be a Templar of all things. So yes, I panicked. I had no idea what the hell to do with you.”

“And even after finding out I was a Templar, I still showed up blue to you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says miserably. “Brighter than anyone I’ve ever met before, including _other Assassins_. I can’t even begin to understand why, and Peggy doesn’t know either. So we brought you on to the Azzano mission as—well, a test of sorts. And maybe this will all backfire spectacularly, but God help me, I do trust you.”

“Just because you trust me doesn’t mean I have any reason to trust you.”

“Yes,” Steve says. “But I wasn’t asking you to trust me. You wanted to know why _I_ trusted you, and I answered.”

 

* * *

 

It’s not as if one strange conversation with Steve is enough for Bucky to actually trust him. But he’d be an idiot to ignore—whatever this is. An opportunity of sorts. The fact that through some bizarre fluke, he had somehow gained the implicit trust of an Assassin. It’s an opening that no other Templar has ever had before.

So he stays with the Assassins, mulling over his options as they continue the long march home.

Because technically, he failed his mission. Utterly. He let the Assassin slip through his fingers. Sure, there still may be a chance to have another go at Steve now, but Bucky knows he won’t take it. He just can’t. And there’s very few real openings with how much Peggy watches him like a hawk. 

He’s also compromised his identity and something of the Templar plans. He’s not naive enough to believe that Peggy hadn’t gleaned at least as much information from Bucky as he had from them. Who knows what she’s managed to divine from his actions. And he missed the designated time to report back by a healthy margin, considering how long this little side trip to Azzano is taking.

It’s not hard to imagine what his superiors will have concluded after Bucky failed to check in. After all, he was sent alone to take out an _Assassin_. If Bucky failed trying to kill an Assassin, it almost certainly meant he was dead. There’s no point wasting resources to verify his status if he inexplicably disappeared. Not with an agent this low in the chain of command, not with how thin they’re spread trying to make the war less bloody than it already is. Even if he split off from the rest of the group now to make better time back to base, the drop point for communication with his superiors will be destroyed by then. 

For all intents and purposes, Bucky’s a dead man. At least for now.

He was aware that this would be an eventuality before heading to Azzano, but he just couldn’t ignore an opportunity like that. And even now, he doesn’t regret his decision. Not when it’s the most he’s done to strike against HYDRA this entire war. 

The drop point was the only secure method of communication with his superiors on the frontlines. Still, he’s not entirely without options. If he can make his way back to London, he can get in touch with the Templars stationed there and update them on his status. 

But he doesn’t much like the idea of returning, tail tucked between his legs, with nothing to show for his failure. Sure, he can tell them about the bizarre magical ability that Steve talked about, but in all honesty, that’ll just get him laughed out of the briefing room. It wouldn’t be the first time some gullible low-ranking Templar got too caught up in the myth of the Assassins and reported in with some fantastical bullshit story. Leave it to Steve to blithely share earth-shattering secrets that still somehow manage to be _completely_ _useless_ to Bucky.

So yes, he’s not ready to go back just yet. 

It does leave him at loose ends at the moment. He’s without any of the resources and intel from the Templars, but that also gives him a degree of freedom he hasn’t had this entire war. For the first time, Bucky can go anywhere and do anything as he sees fit.

“What’re you going to do after this?” Bucky asks when they’re half a day away from base camp.

Steve glances at him. “I think you already know the answer to that,” he replies dryly.

And yeah, he does. But he wants—no, he _needs_ to hear it. Even back in Azzano when all the cards were on the table, Steve never explicitly said it. There’s the beginnings of a plan forming in the back of his head, but if Bucky’s going to do this, he needs to hear Steve give voice to what the Assassins intend to do.

“Tell me anyway.”

Steve studies him carefully, and Bucky can’t tell if he gets the significance of this. The decision that he’s going back and forth on. 

“We’re going after HYDRA.”

Bucky nods and takes a breath. Right. This reckless idiotic plan is starting to feel that much more tangible. Christ, what the hell is he thinking? Throwing his lot in with the Assassins. Going rogue. Maybe burning his bridges with the Templars on the slim chance of finally, _finally_ seeing HYDRA brought to its knees.

“What will you do?” Steve asks, and for a startling moment, Bucky’s convinced he knows what he’s thinking.

“Sell all your secrets to the Templars, of course,” he replies. “Lots of very important intel here. Like the fact that the Assassins’ top operative is an absolute idiot. Don’t have to waste time trying to kill you if you’re gonna do the job for us.”

“Glad to be of service. We wouldn’t want to squander valuable Templar resources.”

“Exactly.”

They walk on in silence for a few minutes. Then Steve says, “So really, what’re you going to do?” And fuck, guess he really does have an idea of what Bucky may or not’ve been planning.

Because watching how easily the Assassins had slipped past Azzano’s defenses, destroyed the facility in a matter of hours—it’s made one thing clear. If the Assassins have set their sights on HYDRA, it’s only a matter of time before they’re destroyed. No one knows how good the Assassins are at dismantling organizations better than the Templars. 

This may be his one chance to take on HYDRA and actually take them down. For months, the Templars have been hamstrung by their efforts to deescalate all sides. As big of a threat as HYDRA is, they just don’t have enough resources to devote to tackling that problem, not when the entire world seems to be doing its best to tear itself apart. How slow the Templars have been to deal with HYDRA has frustrated Bucky for months, even if he understands why they can’t afford to simply drop everything to wipe out a minor weapons development branch of the Nazis. 

For so long, Bucky’s had to bite his tongue and wait for a day when HYDRA finally becomes a high enough priority for the Templars. But he’s tired of waiting. He may not like them, but at least, the Assassins seem to actually be _doing_ something about HYDRA. And Bucky’s selfish enough to want to be there to watch that entire sick organization be razed to the ground.

“I thought I’d tag along with your lot,” Bucky says lightly, despite how hard his heart pounds in his chest. “See what I can do about this Nazi death cult of yours. Nasty bunch, or so I’ve heard.”

Steve looks at him for a long time, and for a moment, Bucky thinks he’s going to tell him no. It wouldn’t be surprising. His reasons for trusting Bucky seem pretty damn flimsy. Or well, bullshit. 

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know if your superiors will be okay with you joining up with the Assassins.” There’s something careful about the way Steve says this, like he’s making sure Bucky knows what he’s getting into.

He shrugs. “They’ll learn to live with it.” Steve’s nice enough to refrain from pointing out that they really, really won’t.

“You might see things you’re not going to like. There’s a lot of ugliness you might not be ready for.”

“ _Christ_ , I know what I’m getting into. You act like I haven’t been fighting this war for two fucking years,” Bucky snaps. “I’ve seen my share of gruesome shit. I’m not gonna run away at the first sign of blood.”

“Okay,” Steve says. And for a moment, Bucky gets the feeling that maybe he hadn’t been talking about the possibility of seeing some gore. “There’s just one more thing.”

“What?”

“We still have to convince Peggy this is actually a good idea.”

Fuck.

 

* * *

 

Getting Peggy to concede ends up being both easier and harder than they expected. It doesn’t help that midway through Steve revealed that he told Bucky about his ‘magical’ ability. She isn’t suspicious of Bucky per se. She doubts his motivations and the ease with which he chose to defect from the Templars.

“Helps you, doesn’t it?” he snaps, a little too sharply.

Peggy merely purses her mouth at him for this. He still doesn’t know what her face looks like because she refuses to lower her hood around him.

Not that he’s actually defecting. He’s still a Templar. At the end of all this, he’ll part ways with the Assassins as unlikely but temporary allies and go back. Maybe. It won’t be easy. His superiors will be rightfully upset with him for faking his death, going rogue, and gallivanting across the countryside with the Assassins. 

And hey, if somewhere along the way, he gathers game-changing information about them, it’ll certainly help to have a bargaining chip to get him back into the good graces of the Templars. Either way, he’ll figure something out. And even if they never take him back, it’s not like he’s ever actually going to become an Assassin.

Steve steps in, hood down, all his earnestness turned to Peggy. “We could really use the help. We’re short a marksman.”

“And may I remind you, _why_ we’re missing an operative?”

“Bucky’s not another Clemson.”

“You’re right,” Peggy says. “He’s not one of our own. He’s not a man we’ve trusted since the beginning who revealed himself to be a Templar plant. Barnes is a known quantity, an active hostile agent for the Templars who’s already demonstrated that he’s under orders to _kill_ _you_. We didn’t know Clemson was a Templar, but we definitely know Barnes is.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow at that. He had wondered how his superiors had gotten access to so much information about Assassin movements. And why the Assassins hadn’t been where they were supposed to be, even though the intel had usually been reliable. The Templars had an inside man, but he’d been caught just before Bucky’s mission. He’s probably dead now. “But I thought I wasn’t a threat,” he points out.

“Which is why you would’ve been able to walk out of here with your life intact. Indulging Steve’s curiosity on a nonessential mission is one thing. It’s another thing entirely to invite a known enemy operative into our fold, letting him become privy to key intel on our plans and movements.”

“So we don’t do that,” Steve says.

Peggy sighs with exasperation. “It’s a bit too late for that, isn’t it? He knows now that we’re after HYDRA. The Templars will know where to look for us.”

“I want to see HYDRA taken down just as much as you do,” Bucky cuts in, bristling. “My superiors feel the same way. They’d sooner lend a hand than sabotage your efforts. I think our Orders can look past our differences for the sake of fighting a common enemy.”

Peggy scoffs, and Steve’s brow wrinkles. They exchange silent looks.

“As pleasant as that sounds,” Peggy says, her mouth twisting, “there’s no way to verify that this outweighs your commitment to the Templar agenda, or more specifically, your hatred of Assassins.”

“Taking down HYDRA _is_ the Templar agenda.”

“Blue, Peggy,” Steve says quietly.

Peggy rounds on Steve and points a finger at him. “You can’t just ignore all sense and blindly follow that gift of yours. You were as surprised as the rest of us when Clemson betrayed us.”

“Clemson never showed up blue. He’s always been grey to me.”

“That just shows you’re fallible, Steve. You can be tricked just as much as anyone else.”

“This is different,” Steve insists. “You weren’t there when Bucky saved the lives of those recruits. You didn’t see what he was like when he thought I was HYDRA. He has no love for them. He can help us.”

Peggy stares him down for a long time. Then she sighs and says almost fondly, “It’s never easy with you, is it? This is why you’d make a terrible soldier.”

“Lucky for me, we’re not soldiers.”

She shakes her head then puts her hand on her hips. “I’m trusting your judgment in this.” 

Steve’s eyes widen, and Bucky gets the sense that he was expecting a lot more resistance on this. “Peggy—”

“But,” Peggy cuts in sharply, raising a finger, “It’s on your head if you’re mistaken about him. I’m containing the amount of damage he can do. You’ll be running missions with him, but you won’t be working with your unit, Steve. They’ll be assigned separately. It’s not going to be anyone’s neck on the line but your own. Is that clear?”

Steve nods jerkily, his throat working. “That’s fair.”

“So long as you understand what you’re getting yourself into.” Peggy turns and runs an appraising eye over Bucky. “And you should start wearing a hood.”

He sputters. “What?”

“I doubt you want your old comrades recognizing your face alongside an Assassin. There’s a reason why this is a part of our uniform.”

Bucky frowns. “Yeah, and a loose piece of cloth fluttering in the wind is _exactly_ what a sniper needs. I might as well wave a flag telling everyone where my head is.”

“It’s hardly a gaudy scarf,” Peggy says with a wave of her hand. “But if you’d prefer to risk the entire Templar Order branding you a traitor and hunting you for the rest of your life, be my guest.”

He scowls. “ _Fine_.”


	2. Chapter 2

They’re nearly killed on their first mission.

It’s partly intel gathering and partly eliminating a prominent HYDRA official who was sent to investigate what happened at Azzano. Steve was able to get in and take out his target relatively quickly and undetected, but he stuck around a little too long to get more information on supply movements. So by the time he regroups with Bucky, the woods are swarming with HYDRA soldiers searching for them.

It’s the kind of nightmare scenario that Bucky’s been terrified of the entire war. Too many enemies to slip past. An insecure position that’s guaranteed to be exposed sooner rather than later. Too late in the day to take any decent shots but not so late that he can slip away under the cover of darkness. He can neither fight nor retreat. It’s the kind of situation where the only thing he can do is sit and wait and pray that by some miracle, he won’t be found.

“I can’t see anything,” Bucky grits out, hating to admit this weakness. That he’s helpless in this. 

Steve sits across from him in their poorly concealed foxhole as Bucky swears and tries to keep from panicking. This is made all the worse by the fact that Steve could very likely escape safely, but he’s choosing not to because Bucky can’t do the same.

Bucky bites down on his thumbnail as he runs through their options. They’re—not ideal. They could hide out here and hope they’re not found. He could tell Steve to try to draw the soldiers away, so he can escape while they’re distracted. He could also just tell Steve to move to a safer position while Bucky hides here and hopes for the best. He could hold his current position and try to pick off as many of them as possible. He doesn’t much like the idea of hiding passively or exposing themselves. Regardless of what they do, it’s guaranteed to get one or both of them killed. The ideal scenario would be to hold their position until they can retreat hidden by nightfall. 

“Do you have binoculars on you?” Steve asks.

Bucky blinks at him. “What?” Steve just unslings his M1 carbine from his shoulder and looks expectantly at him. Bucky sighs and rifles through his pack before tossing it to him. “What the hell do you need binoculars for?”

“You ever worked with a spotter before?” Steve says instead.

“No,” Bucky flushes, glad that the hood foisted onto him is hiding it. In hindsight, it’s obvious what Steve intends to do. “There wasn’t the manpower for snipers to double up on missions.”

Steve’s mouth twists at that. “That’s an easy way to get your men killed off quickly.”

“When you’re in a war against Assassins, having more people with you won’t actually save you. It just means more dead operatives.”

“That’s beside the point. Bucky, you’ve been active for two years, and no one’s ever spotted for you?”

“So what?” he snaps defensively. “I’ve gotten this far on my own, haven’t I?”

“It’s a wonder you’ve survived as long as you have,” Steve mutters to himself. Then to Bucky, “Do you at least know how spotters work?”

“Christ, Steve, yes, I know what spotters do. I’m not _incompetent_.”

“Good, then let’s get to work.”

Steve moves closer to Bucky and scans the area with a practiced gaze, then lifts the binoculars up to his face. “Two units, twelve men each.” His voice is quiet when he says this, almost a whisper. “Closest one is approximately one hundred fifty meters from our position. By the fallen tree, the big one with all the roots. Do you see it?” 

A shiver runs through Bucky at the sound of his voice, pitched low and calm. It’s oddly intimate. He can’t help but be aware of how close Steve is to him. They’re practically pressed shoulder to shoulder. He can feel the heat of Steve’s body against his side. Bucky swallows.

“Do you see it?” Steve repeats, lowering the binoculars to glance at Bucky. The gold in his irises is obvious this time. It’s startling how bright it is in the almost darkness. It’s like seeing a wild animal’s eyes catch and reflect the light at night. He’s using that strange vision he talked about. “Bucky?”

He shakes himself out of his distraction and sweeps his eyes over the area. It doesn’t take long for him to catch sight of the gnarled mass of roots and dirt. “I see it,” he murmurs. It’s still too dark for him to make out the enemy Steve sees with his enhanced vision. 

“Wind’s low, fifteen miles per hour, south-east. He’s behind the tree, moving west. Should enter your field of vision next to the roots in five, four…”

Bucky positions his rifle and adjusts the angle until it’s aimed at the point where the soldier’s head would roughly be after leaving the shelter of the uprooted tree. He watches for movement through his scope as Steve finishes the countdown. He almost misses it, and he definitely wouldn’t have seen it without Steve’s directions, but there’s that tell-tale movement of a body walking. He adjusts his aim and fires.

The crack of the rifle is almost explosive in the quiet of the forest.

“Miss,” Steve murmurs. “Adjust three ticks up, four ticks left. Hold, hold… Fire.”

Bucky fires again between breaths, letting out a sigh when he hears Steve’s quiet ‘hit’.

“Both units moving to our position. There’s a large rock shaped like a fist about twenty meters to the left of the tree, do you see it?”

And so it goes. Bucky fires nearly blindly in the rapidly darkening forest, relying on nothing but long years of experience and Steve’s steady stream of instructions. He misses a lot of shots. It’s unavoidable when visibility is so poor. The shots he does land would’ve been impossible without Steve next to him, his eyes glowing gold as he peers through his binoculars.

They’ve certainly done a good enough job to pin the HYDRA units down, preventing them from moving any closer. The enemy soldiers are operating just as blindly as Bucky. Turning on a light would be tantamount to suicide, considering it would just make them an easier target for him.

At one point, Steve’s presence by his side disappears with a murmured, “Give me a moment. Keep going.” A few moments later, there’s a muffled shout of pain just outside the foxhole followed by the sound of a body slumping to the ground. Bucky fires at a soldier after catching sight of moonlight flashing off of his metal belt buckle. There’s the staccato burst of automatic fire behind him. And then silence.

Steve returns to his side, his body brushing against Bucky. “Nice shot,” he says.

It isn’t long after that before the HYDRA soldiers decide that they’d rather not stumble around blindly while being picked off one by one by a sniper who can see in the dark. They retreat back to the shelter of the fortified trucks. And that leaves Bucky and Steve in the clear. They survived the ordeal. Miraculously.

Bucky flops back to lie sprawled on the ground, staring up into the dark as the full impact of what just happened hit him. His heart thunders in his chest. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says.

Steve’s head pokes into his field of vision, the traces of golden light slowly fading from his eyes. He pulls his hood back and grins mischievously down at Bucky. It’s something he’s noticed about Steve. He doesn’t wear the hood up nearly as often when he’s around Bucky. It always seemed like the Assassins never showed their faces even amongst their own. Maybe Steve picked up on the discomforted tension in Bucky whenever his face is hidden by that beaked hood.

And Bucky ends up learning a lot simply be being around an unmasked Steve. He has an honest face, unused to deception of any kind. It’s something that still manages to be surprising. The way his brow furrows, the way his mouth twitches into the beginnings of a smile. It makes Bucky wonder just how much humanity and emotion the Assassins are keeping hidden under their hoods.

“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” Steve says.

“By all rights, we should be dead. Landing shots in conditions like this? It’s pitch black. This should’ve been _impossible_.”

“Well, clearly it’s not because we just did it.”

Steve says that so casually that Bucky can only stare incredulously up at him for long minutes. Steve just saved them both from what was quickly becoming a worst case scenario. Bucky would’ve died today if it weren’t for him. And he doesn’t even seem to realize the significance of it. As if this was the sort of thing he did every other day. And all things considered, that’s probably true.

“You Assassins are _insane_ ,” Bucky declares and starts to laugh hysterically.

 

* * *

 

Working alongside Assassins, Bucky thinks, is not so different from fighting for the Templars.

A lot of the tactics are oddly similar, but he supposes makes sense in hindsight. Seeing as they’re both not technically on any side of the war, there’s a lot that they can and can’t do. They have to find ways to be mobile amidst ever-shifting battle lines. They need to send and receive intel and rations in a way that doesn’t draw attention. Their operations have to be light on their feet and adaptable to any situations that may arise.

They operate almost identically except for two key differences: Assassins seem to think that absolute reckless insanity is a perfectly viable tactic, and Assassins almost never work alone. He never knew this before. He and the rest of the Templars had always assumed they were a solitary bunch. Their work is dangerous, and every mission teeters between victory and utter disaster. It’s a tightrope walk that no one but the Assassins are mad enough to incorporate into their regular operations. But perhaps that’s why in every mission, the Assassins do everything they can to have two people in the field. One that everyone sees, and one that no one does, ready to step in if something goes wrong.

Sure, there are large-scale Templar operations that require them to pull in dozens of people. But the day-to-day missions are run alone. No one to call for help if things go south. In truth, the Templars are scattered, held together by a common goal and a dozen spiderwebs of intermediaries. There’s no single chain of command to speak of. They’ve had to be when generations of warring with Assassins have taught them that centralized leadership can be the most dangerous of liabilities. Dispersing authority and influence amongst many makes it much more difficult to take down the entire Order at once. 

He remembers the old fear that he’ll die as just one anonymous John Doe of many. That anyone who finds him will just assume he’s a name lost in the military records, a dead foot soldier in the wrong war. Not even his fellow Templars will remember him because by necessity, they can’t allow themselves to know their comrades. Bucky knows maybe a handful of faces amongst the Templars, most of them little more than middlemen. It’s better that way. It’s impossible to betray people and secrets he doesn’t know. It’s a solitary and often very short existence.

But that’s not the way of the Assassins. He’d caught a glimpse of it when he watched Steve and Peggy in a quiet moment together. When it was the second watch of the night, and it was just the two of them sitting with their backs to the last embers of the fire, scanning the dark for signs of danger. It was in the way Peggy fought Steve on bringing Bucky along, the fear that he was making a mistake that would one day kill him. But it was also in how she eventually yielded to him. That she worried for him, but respected him enough to make these decisions for himself. 

There was trust there. Something like love too.

In hindsight, it makes sense. The Assassins have never had to worry about such things as human weakness the way the Templars do. They’ve waxed and waned through the centuries, but they’ve never truly been vulnerable. Always the hunters, never the hunted. It’s allowed them to breed camaraderie, loyalty, devotion within their ranks. It’s unsettling that the cold ruthless Assassins care for their comrades with an intensity that the Templars have never allowed themselves to feel.

It’s a startling revelation. That the Assassins have _weaknesses_. That it’s something as basic and human and exploitable as emotional attachment to their own. All this time, they’d called themselves a _Brotherhood_ , and it had never occurred to the Templars what this must’ve truly meant.

 

* * *

 

The last thing Bucky expects to see when he turns the corner in a HYDRA outpost is a familiar face. For a moment, they both freeze and just stare at each other. Even though he was aware this was always a possibility, it’s only now that he realizes that he never truly prepared himself for running into a fellow Templar. A comrade. Someone he actually knew.

He doesn’t know the man’s name, but that’s by design rather than lack of familiarity. They’d run a few intel gathering missions together. He had a knack for getting into places he wasn’t supposed to, but he was never much of a fighting man. Bucky’s training meant he was well-suited to guarding his back from trouble. When they happened to be in the same area, they were occasionally assigned together. They were never friends. But they knew each other.

He and Steve got separated at some point as is what often happens navigating the convoluted HYDRA facilities. Steve always finds his way back to Bucky regardless. He’s grateful that Steve isn’t here with him. He doesn’t know what the hell Steve would even want to _do_ with a random Templar unceremoniously dumped in their lap. Steve is more human than Bucky ever thought an Assassin could possibly be, but he’s still an Assassin in the end. Would Steve show this man the same odd trust and mercy he’d shown Bucky? Or would he insist on killing the Templar enemy?

The man’s face goes slack with surprise at first sight of Bucky, at the rifle held loosely in his hands. Then it twists, and he fumbles for his gun. That’s enough to push Bucky into blind, frantic action. He rushes forward and knocks the butt of his rifle into the man’s arm before he can get a shot off. It forces him to drop his gun. They both watch as it skitters across the floor, out of reach, leaving Bucky the only one armed.

The man goes very, very pale.

It strikes Bucky then that he himself is not wearing his usual greens. He’s wearing what had been given to him by the Assassins. The hood has done exactly what it was meant to do: it’s hidden his face entirely from view. In this, he’s not Bucky Barnes. He’s nothing more than an Assassin alone in a room with a Templar.

Something in Bucky twists at the thought that a comrade would think of him as one of them. There’s a sudden urge to tear off the hood and show that he’s not _really_ an Assassin. He’s just dressed like an Assassin, fighting and killing men alongside an Assassin, carrying out the orders and missions of the Assassins. As if _that_ would set the record straight. Better to be a run-of-the-mill Assassin than a Templar turned traitor. Because to all eyes, that’s exactly what Bucky did. 

He lets out a long, slow breath and straightens up, letting the front of his rifle drop to point at the ground. Then he takes a step to the side. The man watches him warily. Bucky shrugs and jerks his head to the door. It takes a good few minutes of suspicious staring before the man cautiously begins to move towards the door, snatching up his dropped pistol. When he passes the threshold, he takes off at a full sprint as if expecting Bucky to change his mind the moment he turns his back.

Bucky listens to the sound of his retreating footsteps, then focuses on the task at hand. It’s only when he turns back around, the supply orders bundled up in a neat stack in his hand, that he notices the other presence in the room. Steve stands just in front of the doorway, his weight evenly centered, a thoughtful look on his face as he looks at Bucky.

It leaves him feeling oddly defensive. Like this is something he should have to justify to Steve. Bucky’s shoulders hunch up and before he can think better of it, he snaps, “I’m still a Templar, y’know. It’s not like I’ve suddenly become one of your lot.”

“I never doubted it.” And Steve doesn’t once point out the fact that he’s worn the hood for nearly a month now. That he will wear the hood for a good long time more. For as long as it takes to root out and destroy all traces of HYDRA.

“I’m not just gonna kill him for being a Templar.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“Good,” Bucky says. The gathered intel rustles in his hands.

Steve studies him for a moment longer, hands loose at his side. “Did you know him?”

“Why did you let him go?”

Steve blinks at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I can’t believe I have to keep repeating myself, but need I remind you? Templars? Assassins? I thought I was the exception not the rule.”

There’s honest to god bafflement on Steve’s face and he tentatively says, “Are you jealous that I let people other than you live?” 

Bucky groans. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I don’t see why you have a problem with me _not_ killing one of your comrades.”

“Because he’s on my side! So by extension, he’s _your_ enemy.”

“But killing him would’ve served no purpose.” Steve’s look of genuine confusion is really starting to piss Bucky off. He just wants to grab the man by the shoulders and shake him until some semblance of sense made it into that blond head of his.

“You had no trouble killing Templar operatives before.”

“I never killed Templars indiscriminately before.” Steve sends him a pointed look. “Just the ones that shoot at me first.”

Bucky huffs and rolls his eyes. “Okay, well then, you have no trouble killing HYDRA soldiers indiscriminately _now_.”

“Well, they tend to shoot at me first too.”

“Because you’re _such_ a pacifist.”

Steve’s frowning now. “I never said I was. I’m just saying I don’t take killing lightly.”

 

* * *

 

“So where did you grow up?”

Bucky glances over at Steve. He’s sitting reclined with his feet propped up against the wall, his head tipped back to look at the ceiling. Bucky kicks at Steve’s legs, forcing him to sit upright. “What are you twelve? Pay attention.”

“He’s not going to show up any time soon. No one arrives on schedule when they’re traveling through active war zones,” Steve says, then very deliberately puts his feet back up on the wall.

Bucky sighs. He does know that they’re not likely to see their target for another few days. They’d set up camp with exactly this in mind. Everything from the location to the small stockpile of rations they brought with them was all so they could stay here for however long it takes for the target to finally show his face. There’s very little that can make an abandoned hillside bunker actually comfortable. But they’ve been constantly on the move for long enough that Bucky’s just grateful to finally have a chance to stop and rest somewhere relatively secure. 

Still, it’s only been a few hours, and Steve’s already driving Bucky a little crazy. All they have to do is sit and wait, but it’s quickly becoming clear that Steve is not a man who deals well with extended periods of inaction. Apparently, when given too much time on his hands, Steve decides that the best use of his time is to badger Bucky with personal questions that are _none of his_ _goddamn business._

Bucky says as much to Steve when he repeats his question.

“Well, I could always just guess,” Steve says with a grin. “Somewhere hmm, very rural, I’m guessing. Some small town where the most interesting thing there is the soda fountain.”

Bucky scowls at him and says nothing.

“Or I could just say that you’re obviously Brooklyn born and bred. The accent kind of gives it away.”

“Then why even _ask?_ ”

“Just making conversation. The time’s not going to pass itself.”

“So what, we shoot the breeze, share our whole life story until at the end of all this, we’re suddenly friends?”

Steve tilts his head. “Are we not?”

“What?”

“Friends. I was under the impression that we were.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Bucky grumbles. 

“Aww, don’t get shy on me now.”

Bucky ignores him and turns back to peering through his binoculars, surveying the absolute goddamn nothing they’re stuck watching for who knows how long. Trees and rocks and an old scouting outpost. The thought of passing that time in utter silence is daunting to say the least. He sighs. “Yes, I’m from Brooklyn.”

Steve makes a triumphant noise. “I gotta say, it’s goddamn weird to hear a borough accent from a sniper of your caliber.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Actually, yeah. Guys who’re good at this stuff tend to have a specific background. Grew up in the backwoods where there was nothing better to do than run around waving their rifles at random deer. It’s good practice for,” Steve gestures vaguely in Bucky’s direction, “all of this.”

“Hunting deer makes you pretty damn good at hunting men, huh?”

“Same skills apply, yeah.”

Bucky fiddles with the binoculars, half-tempted to take another look at the empty landscape just to give himself something to do. “Not many backwoods in New York, but there sure as hell were smallbore competitions. Even at the height of the Depression, most clubs managed to scrape together enough for prizes. And to a snot-nosed kid with nothing but his old man’s .22, that was a lot more money than I could get anywhere else.”

“So you were in the shooting clubs.”

“It helped a little, I guess. Knowing how to land a bullet on a stationary target a hundred yards away can only do so much. Most of the actual difficult things I had to learn on the fly.” Bucky glances over at Steve. He’s leaning forward in his seat now, as if hearing the mundane details of Bucky’s adolescence is actually something to be interested in. “So what about you? How the hell does a guy like you get mixed up with the Assassins?”

“Same as how I imagine you fell in with the Templars,” Steve says. “I wanted to save the world, and they told me they’d help me do just that.”

Bucky snorts. “I really doubt it was the same.”

“Well, why else would a good man join the Templars?”

“You really need to stop acting like that’s such a strange thing. It’s not like you have the moral high ground for joining a cult that ritualizes cold-blooded murder.”

Steve clasps his hands and stares down at them. There’s an uneasy expression on his face, and Bucky gets the sense that maybe he’s hit a nerve. He has the demeanor of a man who’s thinking about a problem he’s mulled over many times before. Part of him feels bad for bringing up a topic that Steve clearly has struggled with in the past. Most of him wants to know how a man like Steve justifies the methods of the Assassins to himself.

“I’m not saying we haven’t done a lot that I’m ashamed of. We’ve made compromises that I wish we never had to, and that’s something that we’ll have to carry with us for the rest of our lives. But neither of our Orders have clean hands in this. The Templars have shed just as much blood as the Assassins. The difference is what it’s all in the service of.”

Bucky arches an eyebrow. “That sure as hell is a pretty sentiment, but you didn’t answer my question. If you really wanted to save the world, you could’ve, I dunno, tried to cure tuberculosis. You didn’t have to put on a hood and go kill people. Why the Assassins? What are you even fighting for?”

And for a moment, Steve seems genuinely taken aback by that. “You don’t know?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I did, genius.”

“It’s just kinda odd that you’ve spent how many years fighting us, and you don’t know what we stand for.”

“It’s not that weird. Assassins were the bogeymen in the night. Stories they told new recruits to scare the piss out of them. We didn’t need to know why.” Bucky shrugs and flushes. “I mean, I knew, intellectually that you were people. But you were people like the Nazis are people.”

Steve nods. “But then you went and actually met one. And nothing’s so clear cut now.” 

“So answer my question.”

“Well, what are the Templars about?”

Bucky crosses his arms. “Bringing order to chaos. Cleaning up other people’s messes, mostly. A lot of the time, your messes.”

“Well, then we’re a bit the opposite. Freedom to make choices, good and bad. To be stupid and human and make stupid human decisions. To disagree, to fight messy wars, to make mistakes.”

“You’d kill for that?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Steve cocks his head. There’s something assessing about his gaze. Like all of this is some sort of test. “Have you ever wondered what it would take to make a perfect society? A utopia? Thing is, before you get there, you gotta fix what can’t be fixed. You can’t make anything perfect when there’s messy imperfect people mixed into the equation. Anytime someone claims they want to make a perfect world, you start to wonder how far they’d go to achieve that.”

Bucky frowns. “That’s pretty damn extreme. None of us are claiming we’re making a perfect world. Just a better one.”

“So you’ll just spend the rest of history scurrying after everyone else, sweeping up after them? Is that really what the Templars are about? Have you never once been tempted to just stop the messes before they ever even happened?”

“Well, of course. If anyone knows something bad’s coming, they’d want to stop it. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing in theory.”

“And what, you Assassins sit on the sidelines. Watching people tear each other apart, watching all the shitty things in the world happen, and say, well, there’s nothing we can do about it, that’s just how people are. And you kill anyone who gets it into their head that maybe they could make things a little bit less horrible. Yeah, _shame on us_.”

“We do tend to take issue when people decide that all these problems can be fixed through total control.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Well, then we should have nothing to fight about. The Templars have never advocated for absolute power over other people.”

Steve smiles faintly. “It does make you wonder, huh? Why we’ve been fighting for so damn long. We’re foot soldiers in a war where no one even remembers why we hate each other so much in the first place.”

It’s an uncomfortable thing. To hear someone echoing what Bucky only let himself think of late at night when all is quiet. That all this fighting and killing is pointless. What is really the point of this war fought behind the scenes, in the margins of recorded history. He scowls and looks through his binoculars again.

Steve seems content to let the thought just sit out in the open, but after a while, it gets unbearable for Bucky. He’s never liked second-guessing himself, and this feels all too much like that. “You got any siblings?” he asks just to talk about anything else.

“Nah, it was just me and my ma.”

“Figures. You seem like an only child. Bet you were a pain in the ass.”

Steve straightens primly. “I’ll have you know I was a goddamn angel.”

“Sure,” Bucky says. “And perfect child as you were, you used to practice knife throwing with that fancy switchblade you got for Christmas.”

“It was a trench knife actually, and I never threw it. Maybe that’s why I became an Assassin.”

Bucky snorts and settles deeper into his seat. “Your poor mam, she must’ve gone all grey because of you.”

“Like you should talk. You were probably an absolute hellion.”

And the next few days pass just like that.

 

* * *

 

When they stop in a village pub, the first thing Steve does is lower his hood and nod at the barkeep with a faint smile on his face. Which is fine if they were anywhere else but in a war-blighted Italian village where every last one of the locals is glaring at them. It’s a sullen angry place. The men here are sunk deep into their cups, all their anxiety turning ugly the more they drink. Maybe some villages in the Italian countryside align with the Allies, but most just wish the war wasn’t happening on their doorstep. And in the end, a soldier is a soldier regardless of whose uniform he’s wearing. 

It doesn’t help that Steve and Bucky are wearing one that’s unknown to them. The both of them are in their hoods. It makes them a threat more than anything else—two lone heavily armed men with opaque motives.

None of the villagers are visibly armed, but Bucky doubts they’re as defenseless as they appear. They’re treading into hostile territory, every watching face is grim, just shy of hostile, and all Steve does is meet their stares like nothing’s wrong. That just makes them bristle more.

“We should leave.”

Steve looks at him. “Hmm, why?”

Bucky glances around at the hunched shoulders, the narrowed eyes, the stilted lack of movement in the room. “You can’t possibly be that blind,” he hisses under his breath.

“They’re fine.”

“Really, now. Nevermind all the other evidence that,” Bucky leans forward into Steve’s space, “ _no one_ wants us to be here?”

“Maybe, but this is the first time opportunity we’ve had in a long time to sleep with a roof over our heads.”

“You want us to stay in a place full of people who are just as likely to shoot you in your sleep because it’s a little more _comfortable_ than sleeping rough?”

Steve snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t shoot us. It’s much quieter to use a knife. Saves bullets too.”

“You can’t actually believe that’s remotely reassuring.”

Steve smiles and shrugs before trying to catch the attention of the pub owner who’s doing an admirable job of radiating hostility at them while simultaneously making it a point to ignore them. 

They are eventually begrudgingly served, however. But Bucky’s too tense to even take a sip. The tavern isn’t full, but there’s still far too many hostile faces for comfort. The war has dragged on for years for these people, and Steve and Bucky are unwelcome reminders that foreign soldiers are crawling over every inch of their homeland. 

Bucky stares at him for a long time. “Does this have anything to do with that,” he gestures vaguely at his eyes, “gift of yours?”

“Actually everyone’s pretty much red,” Steve says blithely. And then he gets up and walks over to the meanest looking sonuvabitch in the room, and just starts—chatting to him. In awkward stilted Italian.

It’s all Bucky can do not to stomp over and drag Steve out of the godforsaken town before he gets the both of them killed. If he ever thought he was in some way an exception to Steve’s blithe disregard for caution around openly hostile people, he certainly doesn’t think so anymore. Steve who is utterly confident in a room full of fearful people teetering on the cusp of violence. And himself who’s never felt safe even amongst allies.

Bucky watches as the man Steve’s talking to starts to shift. His shoulders loosen, the grip on his cup loosens, his body starts to angle to Steve as he listens. Bucky has no idea what’s being said, but whatever it is, it’s working. And it’s spreading. The thick tension in the room slowly relaxes as Steve continues to talk with an almost sheepish ‘aw shucks’ quirk to his mouth as if recognizing the absurdity of the situation. It’s just so—disarming. 

A _friendly_ Assassin _._ An oxymoron if he ever heard one.

He’s competent, too practiced in killing. And there’s something in the way that he pivots from the grim work of taking another man’s life to joking with Bucky as if nothing is wrong in the world. For a moment, Bucky feels like he’s on the cusp of understanding. It’s an uncomfortably familiar thing. Better not to dwell on such matters. Better to set all the ugly bitter things aside. Better to grin and bear it.

Then Steve’s next to him, clapping him on the shoulder. “You worry too much.”

“I worry the reasonable amount, thank you very much.”

The man Steve had just been talking to yells something at him from across the room. Steve straightens up, his mouth widening into a grin that borders on reckless and he shouts something in garbled Italian back. There’s a moment where the other man’s eyebrows rise with surprise, and then he starts to laugh, almost despite himself. Some of the other men in the room also chuckle, and for the first time, the atmosphere seems almost light.

“We have a place to sleep. My friend Armando here has offered his barn.”

Bucky stares at him. “How the hell did you do that?”

“Most people are willing to listen if you talk to them.” Steve pushes to his feet and nods to the door.

“Most people shoot you before you even open your mouth.”

“Well, it’s lucky that we’ve run into the few who don’t shoot first.”

Bucky frowns and follows. 

The barn is unremarkable. It’s a creaky wood construction with a donkey that eyes them balefully before proceeding to ignore them both. There are hundreds of others like it scattered throughout this entire country. Not exactly a hotel with goose-down mattresses and champagne, but it’s somewhere warm and dry. Bucky sure as hell isn’t complaining, considering he’s been sleeping rough since the moment he joined up with Steve. Before, he would’ve used whatever accommodations the Allied troops happened to secure for themselves. But one man by himself is easier to slip amongst a group of soldiers than two.

Bucky looks at the dust motes floating through the air, the mustiness of the hay, the stale smell permeating every inch of the barn. It’s clear that it hasn’t seen much use since—well, since the the war began most likely. They could’ve broken the lock open after night fell. They would’ve been gone by morning with no one the wiser. They didn’t need to ask. But Steve asked anyway.

Steve falls into the hay with a whumph and lets out a sigh. It’s starting to darken outside. Bucky busies himself with fiddling with the lamp hanging from an iron stud. It’s quiet except for the snuffling of the donkey somewhere in the back, and the click of his Zippo lighter as he tries to get the wick to catch. The lamp doesn’t give off much light once he finally does manage to get the flame going, but it’s better than nothing.

The rest of the evening passes slowly. Bucky feels oddly restless, half-formed thoughts rising in his head but receding before he can really grasp them. Steve pushes off his bracers and sets about the work of maintaining them. He lets the hidden blade slide out of its mechanism, the metallic snik of it loud in the stillness of the barn. It’s slow, meticulous work. The blade has to be robust considering how much abuse they endure in battle, but Steve still handles the mechanism with utmost care as he takes it apart, cleans it, oils it.

Bucky’s read endless reports on the Assassins’ infamous hidden blades, but it’s not like any Templar ever got close enough to one to see how it actually worked and lived to talk about it. But all he can think about now is how serene Steve looks despite what he knows about him, despite what he’s seen him do. His brow furrowed in concentration, his hands work in smooth, steady motions, his features are softened by the low warm light.

It’s a study in contradictions. Disassembled, the hidden blade is nothing more than an elegantly constructed mechanism to be maintained. Steve is just a man meditatively doing a simple task he’s done hundreds of times before. Bucky’s watched Steve jump from a ledge and use that momentum to drive this very blade into another man. A beautiful thing capable of the most brutal violence. Steve doesn’t fit the mold of the Assassin. He doesn’t fit the mold of anything, really, least of all a ruthless killer. 

Bucky’s stabbed a man before. He’s never been one for knife work, but he’s learned by necessity. Someone managed to get the jump on him while he was focusing on a target hundreds of meters away. Sighting the enemy, making the right calculations, landing the shot—it requires the kind of concentration that makes you blind to everything else. It’s why Bucky is always so careful when he picks his hiding spots. 

Once, he wasn’t careful enough. He’s only alive because the other man got sloppy when he found Bucky, blinkered and vulnerable. He was just noisy enough to tip Bucky off, and then it’d been a blind, frantic struggle until he managed to fumble his knife out, felt the man shudder, and watched him fall to the ground, gasping wetly. It’d been the first time he experienced death as a visceral, intimate thing. 

There’s a certain amount of detachment that comes with killing from a distance. He’d always considered a sniper’s work to be a grim and bitter task, but in many ways, it shielded him. He’s rarely ever been close enough to really see the fear in their faces. He knows death in a very different way from Steve. To really see and feel what a man is like in the moments before death again and again. Maybe a harder man would be able to close himself off from that. But not Steve.

And maybe that’s what it is. Why against logic, against what’s reasonable, Steve always chooses the more difficult route. To talk to those who mean him harm. Time and again, he tries to find some sort of resolution that doesn’t end in death. Even if it endangers himself, even if it means inviting a Templar into his fold. Anything that means one less life on his conscience.

Steve sets aside the whetstone he’d been using to sharpen the knife attached to the hidden blade mechanism. The reassembly is done with the same efficiency as the disassembly. And he knows that by now, he should be used to by the ongoing understanding of the many ways in which Steve is a good man, but Bucky’s finding that he still somehow has it in him to be surprised.

 

* * *

 

There’s something fundamentally disturbing about watching a man like Steve fight. Maybe it’s the way Bucky was trained. Maybe he’s a coward at heart. But he could never throw himself into a confrontation with no exit strategy. There are the battles he knows he can win, and there are the battles he knows he can get out of. But he doesn’t pick the ones he knows he can’t do either. Steve _only_ seems to pick the battles he can’t quite win and can’t quite retreat from if things go south.

Steve weaves and ducks his way through a swarm of HYDRA guards, the weapons factory behind him merrily ablaze. There’s too much movement and chaos for Bucky to safely take them out without risking hitting Steve. Instead, he focuses on picking off the reinforcements streaming out of the burning factory. A small blessing of working with an absolute maniac is that he rarely has to worry about people shooting at him because they’re usually too busy shooting at Steve.

Bucky sighs. What he wouldn’t give for Steve to carry around a goddamn shield or something. 

Still, he can’t help but watch Steve move through the fray. He’s never really gotten the chance to stop and watch him in the middle of an all-out brawl. And it’s truly a sight to behold. In Azzano, when Bucky had watched the devastating force of Steve in battle, he’d only felt fear. The knowledge that this is what he’s up against, that this terrifying skill would one day be turned against him, that he could very well die at Steve’s hands. He still feels afraid when he watches Steve fight, but it’s not because he fears for himself.

It’s obvious when the tide starts to subtly shift. When Steve starts to tire and can’t maintain the frenetic pace anymore. He starts to put a little more distance between himself and the men he’s fighting. 

So Bucky eases his rifle forward to give Steve some breathing room. Everyone is completely exposed, out in the open, trying to keep clear of Steve to give their comrades hiding back at the base a clean enough sight line to open fire on him. But that means Bucky doesn’t have to worry about accidentally hitting Steve when he shoots at them. With how distracted the guards are by Steve, it’s almost easy landing the first shot. 

They all scatter to dive for cover the moment the first man falls to Bucky’s bullet, and that gives Steve a large enough window to get the hell out. Which he does, moving at a jog that borders on _jaunty_ into the shelter of the tree line and promptly disappearing. A few minutes later, he nudges Bucky’s side with his foot, scaring the living daylights out of him even though he _knew_ Steve was coming. 

Steve’s just a little bit out of breath. It’s just chilly enough for Bucky to see the way it billows out in clouds. They’re close enough that he can just barely feel the warmth and humidity of it against his cheek. When Steve pushes his hood back, his hair sticks up in every direction, and his face is flushed. There’s a tightness in Bucky’s chest that he can’t quite place. Like it was him who’d just been running and fighting for his life. Steve’s mouth tugs up into a smile, and for a moment, they stay there side by side, both of them catching their breath.

Steve has a particular way about him when the dregs of adrenaline start to wear off. His eyes crinkle at the corners a little when he blinks. His shoulders hunch forward, and for a while, he just takes these deep breaths as if reveling in the novelty of being alive once again. It’s only for a moment, the slight smile never leaves his face even if it droops somewhat. 

Bucky has the strangest urge to reach forward and comb down all of those flyaway hairs. Set Steve to rights. He wants to say, _If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be alive._ But then again, the reverse is true. That’s what camaraderie is in the end. A continual exchange of life debts until no one can be bothered to keep score anymore. 

He shoves the urge down and mutters, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted to be killed.”

Steve snorts. “I would never.”

Any number of snarky retorts jump to the forefront of his mind, but when Bucky opens his mouth, he finds that his throat feels strangely dry. There’s just something about Steve. The flush in his cheeks, the gleam in his eye, the exhilarated smile that still tugs at the corner of his mouth. Steve sits full of crazy reckless life, and Bucky just wishes that he could stay that way forever. How very human he is. That he can die just as easily as every other sorry sonuvabitch in this godforsaken war. 

And the thought of that is a lot scarier than he’d like to admit. Because fuck, Bucky’s compromised. Steve’s one of the good ones. He can’t help but like the guy. More than anything else, he just wants to see that he lives to see the end. 

Bucky settles the butt of his rifle more comfortably against his side. “Let’s get out of here before they start shooting at us again.”

 

* * *

 

Since the beginning, Bucky knew that Steve wasn’t sharing a lot of the details of how the Assassins ran as an organization. He never discussed how he got his intel and orders, or even the long term plans for dismantling HYDRA. It’s not that he ever really expected him to. It’d be pretty damn stupid even for Steve, no matter how much he liked Bucky. In this at least, he was sensible. It is a bit funny to think of how much browbeating Peggy had to do to get it into Steve’s head that it’s tactically suicide to share that kind of intel with a turncoat Templar.

So it comes as something of a surprise when Steve mentions offhand that Peggy and his old team would be meeting up with them to run a mission. That he would tell Bucky in advance at all, well, it’s something. That’s a lot of important Assassins in one place. Before, all that they were really risking with Bucky was Steve.

When they meet with her, she watches them both with that assessing gaze of hers. It makes Bucky suddenly feel very conscious of everything—how he naturally falls in line just a half step behind Steve, always positioned to watch his back, how very aware of Steve he is at all times. It had been a necessity at first. Steve’s exactly the kind of idiot to throw himself headlong into danger at the drop of a hat. Over time, Bucky’s started to attune himself to Steve’s every move, the little cues he gives off.

Whatever it is Peggy sees in Bucky, she doesn’t mention. Instead, she turns and curtly starts giving orders to the rest of the group. They’re an eclectic bunch, but that’s to be expected knowing what he knows about Steve. A Brit, a Frenchman, and three Americans, two of whom would never have fought alongside Steve if any of them were in a traditional military. 

Every last one of them is as reckless and insane as Steve, that much immediately becomes clear when they start the mission proper. It’s a sweep through one of the larger HYDRA prisoner facilities, a target that Steve and Bucky never could have tackled on their own. They tended to have single targets, smaller outposts, maybe a supply line. But it’s clear that this is exactly the sort of thing this team does all the time.

The other Assassins move like they’re in a dream. Their movements are just a little too precise and smooth, so fast it makes Bucky feel like he’s running in slow motion. They slip in between guards like they’re made of smoke. Climbing up walls, running and leaping, barely slowing down long enough to incapacitate anyone they encounter with a dizzying array of guns, knives, garrotes, and surprisingly quiet grenades. 

It strikes Bucky that Steve is something of a traditionalist with the only things in his toolbox being his stubbornness, his hidden blades, and his fists. _Sometimes_ he remembers he has a pistol. 

It’s also clear that the operations run very differently. Quick, clandestine, almost entirely silent. By the time, Bucky picks up his rifle to join everyone else, his usefulness from a distance having run out, pretty much every hostile in the building has been neutralized. The alarm hadn’t been raised once. It was the smoothest operation Bucky’s ever been in. Even Steve had restrained himself. 

When they all regroup, Bucky arches an eyebrow at him. “Really? Why weren’t you like this every other goddamn time?”

Steve grins. “But watching you yell at me is so much fun. Why would I ever give that up?”

“It’d save me from going insane.”

“Keeps things interesting, doesn’t it?”

“Next time, I’m letting you get _shot_.”

“Please have your spat later, boys,” Peggy cuts in with a sigh.

“Don’t stop them. They were getting to the entertaining bits,” one of the other Assassins says. Morita, Bucky thinks.

“We can always argue in front of you later,” Steve reassures him.

Peggy pinches her forehead. “On your own time.”

“Or never,” Bucky says. “You could always just not piss me off.”

“You and I both know that’ll never happen.” Steve smiles beatifically.

“I’m so glad I can trust in the professionalism of my men,” Peggy says.

“Is any of this really such a surprise at this point?” the heavily mustached American replies. 

“I thought there was a reason I liked you, Dum Dum.”

“The _mission_ ,” Peggy says.

Begrudgingly, the Assassins refocuses on the matter at hand. Peggy groups everyone off into pairs and assigns them to different parts of the facility. And maybe he should’ve expected it, but Bucky’s still shocked when Peggy assigns herself as his partner. It would’ve made sense for someone new to an operation to work with the person he’s most familiar with. 

But this isn’t about what’s most tactically sound. This is a test. 

“Alright,” Bucky says once they’re separated from the rest of the group. They’re heading to the basement levels while the others are gathering intel or heading to the main prisoner quarters. “Mind telling me what you want with me?”

Peggy’s hood is up, so it’s next to impossible to read her expression when she says, “Not the sort to beat around the bush, I see.”

“I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”

“How courteous of you,” she replies, her mouth quirking ever so slightly.

They walk in silence for a few minutes, slipping out of the hallway and into what looks to be a file room. There’s a lone guard smoking a cigarette. Before he can even react, Peggy darts forward, plucks a stapler off a nearby desk before slamming it into the side of the guard’s head. He falls to the ground, moaning. Simple, efficient, disturbingly resourceful. Peggy’s curls have barely been disturbed by the altercation.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky says.

“I sometimes wonder,” Peggy says as she steps neatly around the downed guard, “what it takes to change a man’s mind. There are many reasons why he decides to do differently. He does it for what he believes is right. He does it for power, for money, for fear, for love.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You pulled me aside because you wanted to talk philosophy?”

“I want to talk about people. It’s an important consideration. Clemson was one of our own. He may not have been one of our best, but he was ours. He wouldn’t have been able to enter our fold if he hadn’t, at least in the beginning, believed in our cause. But at some point, he changed his mind, and then he turned against us. In many ways, I wish people, Assassin or Templar, remained constant in their loyalties. If you could somehow guarantee that they would never stray from your cause. Then I would never have to doubt or question. But sometimes, Assassins choose to be Templars, and Templars choose to be Assassins. That’s the way of things.”

“I never decided to become an Assassin.”

“But you’re not much of a Templar now, are you?”

Bucky clamps down on every retort to that he wants to say. It really isn’t a good idea to antagonize a heavily armed Assassin in the middle of hostile territory. Still, he can’t quite keep his glare restrained.

Peggy smiles faintly at him. “There’s no need to worry. You were never really a Templar in the truest sense of the word. Almost no one amongst your Order is.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Templars are no longer what they were originally meant to be. In the same way that I and my comrades can barely be called Assassins.”

“Christ, don’t tell me this is some bullshit about how our Orders have faded. How time decays all things. Things change. That’s just how it is.”

Peggy’s smile widens into something verging on genuine fondness. “Despite my initial reservations, I am glad that Steve works with you now. You’re refreshingly pragmatic.” She tilts her head. “And no, I was not lamenting the fact that the Assassins have changed with the times. I’m referring to something that runs much deeper.”

“Could you just get to the point already?” Bucky snaps out impatiently.

“My point is that the feud between Templars and Assassins is a futile one. We fight about whether freedom or order should reign, but regardless of what either of us do, both freedom and order will exist side by side in uneasy equilibrium. Sometimes the balance tips one way, but that never lasts forever. One of the benefits of a feud this old is that you learn just how little any of this truly changes.”

“Yeah, Steve said the same thing to me once. It’s a lot of senseless killing going around. Not like that’s new. Not like that’s what’s happening goddamn everywhere, seeing as we’re in the middle of a fucking _world war_. We don’t exactly have a monopoly on pointless deaths.”

“Yes, but that’s the state of our Orders now. But at the very start of all this, how did a conflict like this begin? Have you never once wondered? How has this feud lasted so many centuries? A vendetta with this much longevity is never started for a trivial reason, regardless of what they might become in the future.”

Bucky shrugs. “I dunno.” It never much mattered to him. What was most important was what was happening in the here and now. The Templars never really talked about the nitty gritty details of their history, and that suited him just fine. 

Peggy watches him intently, her gaze almost seems alight with—something. Excitement, maybe. “Freedom and order. How does a fight over these two concepts begin?”

“Hell, how should I know? It could be anything. It doesn’t matter what the catalyst was as long as the narrative constructed around it goes a certain way. It could be a new set of laws. Control over a specific resource. An unjust death.”

“Something significant. A powerful symbol perhaps.”

“I guess.”

Peggy pauses and looks at him. “If you were given the ability to eliminate all human evil, would you do it?”

“Well, yeah,” Bucky says. “Why wouldn’t I? It’d fix a helluva lot of shitty things going on right now.”

“It’s a seductive prospect. It’s why the Templars are so appealing in times of strife.”

Bucky shakes his head. They’ve been walking aimlessly for what feels like hours with Peggy just talking in random, disconnected circles. It’s starting to get very irritating. “Seriously, what the hell are you going on about?”

Peggy turns another corner, and then stops in front of an unmarked door. They’ve passed a dozen doors like it, but she shoulders this one open. Bucky warily follows her inside. He knows what she’s about to show him, knows exactly what he’s going to see when he crosses that threshold. It’s not like any of HYDRA’s atrocities are new to him. But every time is still like a sickening punch to the gut. There’s just no getting used to this kind of abject human suffering.

He and Steve haven’t targeted this sort of facility in a while. They alone weren’t enough to make sure all of the POWs were safe. But Bucky never forgot that this was happening. That this is worth putting aside any feelings he might have about the Assassins and work together with them. 

Peggy pauses, her mouth twisting with sorrow, before she steps forward and unstraps a man from a surgical bench. He murmurs incoherently, too out of it to even realize he’s being rescued.

“Do you know why HYDRA does what it does?” she murmurs.

“Does it matter? Whatever their reasons are, it can never justify,” Bucky reaches out and gently supports the man as Peggy guides him off the table, “this.”

“You’re right. But it’s still worth knowing why they do it. It helps understand their methods at the very least.” Peggy slings the man’s arm over her shoulder, and gestures for Bucky to do the same. Together, they carefully walk him to the far wall and help him sit down. She hands him the canister of water strapped to her belt and watches as the man drinks greedily. “HYDRA is interested in the human mind. How it works. What it takes to break it. Make it pliable. Compliant.”

“They want control,” Bucky says, feeling sick.

“If you could eliminate all human evil, how far would you go to achieve that?”

There’s a rushing in Bucky’s head. For a long moment, all he can do is take long breaths. And it’s only after he’s managed to compose himself that he says, “We’re not the same. I’m not one of HYDRA’s.”

“I never said you were.”

“Well, you sure as hell—” Bucky forces himself to stop, clenching and unclenching his hand. “Just because some ideas sound the same. Just because you think everyone who disagrees with you must all be on the same side, must all be _conspiring_ against you. That doesn’t mean it’s true. Whatever the hell HYDRA does, it doesn’t say jack shit about what the Templars do. We’re _not_ HYDRA.” 

“I never said you were,” Peggy replies mildly.

“None of us are okay with this. We never condoned this. What the hell is so wrong with wanting to help people a little? With giving enough of a shit to try to make the world a little less awful? How the hell does that make us HYDRA?”

“There’s a great deal of history that you don’t know. Assassins look at HYDRA, and we can’t help but think of what the Templars once were.”

“What, Templars went around chopping people’s brains up?”

Peggy looks down, folding her hands together, visibly gathering her thoughts. “No. It was, well—from a certain perspective, it was a more civilized method than this. There was an artifact. It was said to be a godly thing, an object with the power to bring peace and order where there was none. The Templars wanted to use it. Assassins thought it was better to destroy it, fearing what would be lost in the process. In the end, it doesn’t matter. It was nothing more than a pretty glass ball and a handful of rumors. But a lot of blood was spilled by the time we learned this, and ever since—”

Bucky stares incredulously. “So that’s it? This centuries long feud was all over a useless ball?”

Peggy smiles wryly and shakes her head. “It wasn’t the artifact, it was what it represented. It posed a question. Given the power to rid the world of human evil, would you do it?”

“And the Templars said yes.”

“They said yes, and ever since, they’ve been looking for the means to achieve that.”

“That still doesn’t mean—”

“I don’t expect you to change your mind on that, but you need to understand that it’s not this simple.” 

Bucky frowns. “It seems like it is. It’s a simple question. Yes or no.”

Peggy smiles, tilting her head. “What the Assassins have to say about this question is: Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s not. Because to answer the question is to imply that it was a question worth asking in the first place.”

Bucky arches an eyebrow incredulously.

Peggy’s mouth quirks. “It’s simple in theory, but what if someone were to seriously take on the task of eliminating all evil. They would first need to decide what is good and what is evil. And that’s not an easy task. Deciding where to draw the lines, and what to do when they come across those to whom good and evil mean very different things.”

“What is good and what is evil? Who decides?” she asks, leaning forward a little, looking Bucky directly in the eye. “It’s people. These decisions are always human ones. No rule has been passed down to us by some divine, immutable source. It’s why we condemn killing yet justify the wars we fight. Good and evil become contradictory and messy once you look at them long enough, and that’s because good and evil are fundamentally human creations.  Every limit we place on ourselves are those we willfully take on. So in the grand scheme of things, nothing is true, and everything is permitted. Understanding this means that you understand why we, Assassins refuse to answer the question. It’s built on the assumption that there is such a thing as an immutable, universal human evil.”

Bucky crosses his arms. The man between them stops drinking water, and Peggy takes her canister back from him. “So none of this has any meaning? What HYDRA does is fine and dandy because there’s no such thing as evil?”

Peggy shakes her head. “Just because they’re rules made by humans doesn’t mean they’re not powerful. Of course, what HYDRA does is something we want to stop. There’s no justifying this unimaginable harm and suffering.” She pauses and casts a look at him. “The kind that Templars would certainly want to put an end to.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Peggy nods. “So why haven’t they?”

“What?”

“Why haven’t the Templars tried to stop HYDRA?”

 

* * *

 

Bucky stays quiet when they regroup with the rest of the Assassins, the POW in tow. There had been other people locked in the bowels of the HYDRA facility, but all of them were too far gone to be moved. If they had resources, a whole medical team, maybe they could’ve helped these people. But they’re only Assassins, too good at killing to do any good here. Peggy talks to Morita about getting the location of the facility to the Allies. Bucky keeps his mouth shut. 

Steve is sending him little concerned looks but doesn’t approach him. Really, they don’t get much chance to talk at all until a couple days later when they part ways with the rest of the Assassins. And he’s a little grateful for that small reprieve because he’s able to remain very calm when he turns to Steve and asks, “Did you know she was going to do that?”

There’s a small pause. “No.”

“Are you surprised?”

Steve’s brow puckers. “No.”

Bucky groans and rubs a hand down his face. “I really enjoy being told that all along, I’ve actually been on the same side as the very enemies I’ve been trying to destroy.”

“She probably could’ve said it a little more tactfully,” Steve says with a wince.

“Oh, Peggy said it real nice. Wrapped it up in a lot of pretty bullshit.”

“It’s not—it’s not really like that. It’s just, the Templars’ interests aren’t really being hurt by the research HYDRA does. If HYDRA figures something out, then, the Templars have an opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do. Get rid of all human suffering. And if that’s on the table, then they’re willing to—” the lines in Steve’s brow deepens and his mouth twists, “Look the other way for a little while. Make a few sacrifices.”

“For the greater good,” Bucky says bitterly.

Steve bows his head. “People can justify a lot of things to themselves.”

“Like you do? You justify a helluva lot to yourself,” Bucky snaps. “If the positions had been reversed, if whatever HYDRA was researching happened to help you, would you decide that maybe you can ignore them too?”

“No. The killing we already do is far more than we wish we have to. We try to keep it to as few lives as possible. We wouldn’t—we already walk a tightrope of right and wrong. Opening the door to something like this would mean the end of everything the Assassins stand for. We don’t inflict harm unnecessarily. We don’t kill innocents.”

“Funny how things turn out,” Bucky says with a grim smile. “If only Templars had the moral fiber of _Assassins_.”

“It’s not so unimaginable. Assassins are always aware of the inherent contradictions in our actions. It’s not a simple path that we walk. We must always be careful about straying too far in the wrong direction because we know how tenuous the balance is. But Templars don’t have to worry about these things as much. They see the world in easy moral terms. They can afford to be a little more careless, a little less watchful.”

Bucky stares at his hands. It had been easy, hadn’t it? HYDRA was evil, the Assassins were evil, and Templars were good. The world divided up neatly. He didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to worry. All he needed to do was keep his mouth shut and follow orders. And all the while, his superiors had him chasing Assassins while HYDRA merrily carried on. 

“I’m sorry, Bucky,” Steve says, stepping forward and carefully reaching out to take his hand into his own. “I wish it were simple.”

“Stupid of me, huh? To think that it could all be so cut and dry. When has anything ever been straight forward.” He sighs. “I should’ve known better.”

Bucky doesn’t look up, just watches his tendons flex and move under Steve’s hand, feels the warmth of his skin against his own. It’s not doing much to calm him down. Shit, he was such an idiot. He should’ve used his head more. He should’ve asked questions. If he’d actually thought about why his superiors had dragged their feet so much when it came to HYDRA, maybe he would’ve figured all this out sooner. If only he hadn’t been so _complacent_. 

Steve’s head jerks up, and he stares at Bucky like he suddenly grew a second head.

He scowls at him. “What?”

But Steve just keeps looking at him, a strange glint in his eye. His eyes flick over Bucky’s face, searching for—something. There’s an intensity to Steve’s gaze like nothing Bucky’s ever seen before in him. None of it makes sense until for an instant, he sees that familiar flash of gold in Steve’s iris.

“What do you see?” Bucky asks.

“You’re…” Steve trails off, something almost like wonder in his voice. It’s barely a word, just an exhalation that Bucky can feel against his cheek. It strikes him all of a sudden just how close Steve is to him. He pulls back self-consciously, but Steve just follows him, pushing into his space. A heat prickles at the back of Bucky’s neck.

“I’m what?” he says with a scowl.

Steve’s mouth widens into a blinding smile. Something in Bucky’s stomach twists at the sight. “You’re _blue_ ,” he breathes.

Bucky frowns at him. “What the hell do you mean? I’ve always been blue to you.”

Steve’s smile somehow manages to widen further. “I lied.”

“ _What._ ”

“You were red since the very beginning.”

Bucky grabs Steve by the shoulders and just barely stops himself from shaking him. Or throttling him. He wonders if he would show up red then. “You mean, you had absolutely _no_ reason to think I was trustworthy. In fact, even your bullshit magic vision was telling you that I’m your enemy. And you went ahead and decided to trust me anyway.”

“But I did have good reasons.”

“What? You had a good feeling about me?” And this time, Bucky does shake him a little.

Steve lets himself be jostled, all without losing that infuriating smile on his face. “You saved those recruits,” he says simply.

Bucky stops short and stares at him. “What?”

“When they were attacked by that sniper. You knew it would blow your cover. You knew it would draw attention to yourself when you couldn’t afford to. From a purely strategic standpoint, the best thing you could’ve done was slip away and leave them to it. But you stayed. You saved their lives.”

“But it _was_ the tactically smart thing to do.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t. You risked yourself to help those kids when you shouldn’t have. You chose to help the Assassins, knowing it would burn your bridges with the Templars, knowing it could very well leave you stranded with no allies. All of these decisions made things harder and more dangerous for you, but you did them anyway because they were the right things to do.”

The heat prickling at the back of Bucky’s neck is rapidly spreading to his ears and face. He feels oddly exposed and vulnerable, like Steve’s seeing too much of him. But strangely enough, it’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling. “Shit, you’re making me sound like I’m you.”

“Is that really so terrible?”

Bucky sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “You’re not so bad, I guess.”

“You say such nice things,” Steve says dryly.

“Shaddup, I still can’t believe you were so unbelievably stupid. You didn’t know my reasons for saving those kids. Maybe there really was some ulterior motive that you just didn’t know about. Everything else you knew about me screamed that trusting me should be the last thing you do.”

“You might’ve shown up red at the moment, but that doesn’t really say anything about your character. Just that you would do harm to me specifically. Putting all of that aside, I saw that you were a good man, and I put my faith in that person.” Steve leans forward a little bit, placing himself right back at that strange point where he’s way too close. And yet, not close enough. “I’m glad you proved me right. You are exactly the person I believed you to be.”

There’s a pause. Steve is so close that Bucky can almost feel the heat of his skin against his own. There’s a strange shuddering inside of him, an unbearable swell of _something_. It had been there for months, but Bucky never put a name to. He watches the flick of Steve’s eyes as they drop down to focus on Bucky’s mouth, and then back up to meet his gaze. And for a moment, finally, he _understands_.

“I fell in love with that person too,” Steve says.

It’s at that moment, Bucky feels something in himself snap. Maybe it’s his sanity. “You _asshole_.”

Then he grabs Steve by the collar of his shirt, yanking him forward until their mouths are jammed together. A part of him is viciously satisfied when he feels Steve stiffen with surprise, for _once_ , taken off his high horse. 

Bucky pulls back, taking a second to enjoy the dazed look on Steve’s face. “You are _infuriating_ ,” he says. “Even when you compliment me, I still want to punch you in the face.”

There’s a long moment where it’s clear Steve’s just registering what happened. “That was not a punch in the face.”

“Obviously. If I did, I’m pretty sure Peggy would cut my head off.”

“Honestly, she’d probably say I deserved it.”

“Punching you is still on the table. I can definitely still do that.”

“No,” Steve says, pulling Bucky back in. “I like this much better.”

**Author's Note:**

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